


Surviving with Supergirl

by thesameasmine



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Camping, F/F, Falling In Love, Fishing, Kara is basically Bear Grylls, Lena is just Lena, Lost Together in the Woods, Reality TV, Romance, Running Wild Rip-Off, Sex In A Cave, Sharing Body Heat, Smut, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23660386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesameasmine/pseuds/thesameasmine
Summary: Adventurer survivalist, Kara Danvers, invites newly-famous LCorp's CEO, Lena Luthor, on a two-day trip in the woods for an episode of her well-established reality TV show: Surviving with Supergirl.What happens when the two actually get lost and are truly put to the test to survive in the wilderness? And most importantly, what happens when the cameras are no longer rolling?
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 140
Kudos: 1207





	1. Helicopter Rides

“Lena please, you’ve got to accept! It’ll change your life!” Sam, Lena’s best friend and CFO of her company, pleaded with her.

Lena rolled her eyes. “I’m not like you… I’m not ‘trying to find myself’- I’m perfectly fine here in the comforts of modern life not having to eat any worms or snakes or-”

“-It was a scorpion. I ate a scorpion, okay? And would you please just get over it?” Sam shut her up immediately and then made her way to join her in the office’s balcony.

“To be honest,” Sam started as she rested her elbows on the railing. “I can’t believe they invited you…”

Lena smiled at her. “I know, right? I think it must’ve been all the publicity I got this past year because of the nanotech.”

“Well yeah… all those magazine covers and interviews should count for something!” Sam agreed.

A quiet moment went between the two. “So… when did they call you?”

“They called me just this morning actually.” Lena looked over the city. It was getting cloudy now so it was probably going to rain that afternoon.

“And where does she want to take you?” Sam walked even closer towards Lena, physically expressing her intense curiosity.

Lena looked to the side with coy. “Nowhere in particular… They just asked me if I wanted to and I said that I didn’t.”

Sam groaned. “Ugh! I can’t believe you rejected spending two whole days with the Supergirl herself!”

“You know I’m not outdoorsy Sam! What would I even do with myself out there in a jungle or something?” Lena whined.

“It doesn’t need to be super hardcore! You have to tell them the difficulty level you want…. Just pick the easiest and that’s it. You’ll go on a nice hiking trip with Kara Danvers. The whole point is getting to hang out with her. She’s so cool Lena! You have no idea” Sam talked excitedly.

“I really don’t want to eat anything gross.” Lena complained once again.

Sam elbowed her. “Goddammit woman! You can talk about that with the producers as well! You can eat a fish or something! It really doesn’t have to be that bad.”

“And you really think that I should do this?” Lena’s eyebrows raised with worry.

Sam patted her on the back. “Of course I do! It’ll be great! You’ll have an amazing time!”

Lena was still not sure about this. What with her only outdoor activity being walking, what was she going to do on a two day trip into the wilderness.

“What do you have to lose?” Sam asked her in all seriousness.

Lena ponder her words for a moment. At worst she had an awful time and the production would cancel the episode; at best apparently it would ‘change her life’.

“Okay, I guess I can call them back then.” Lena conceded.

“Yes!” Sam yelled excitedly. “You have to say hi to Kara for me! I haven’t seen that woman in like three years!”

* * *

“Hello I’m Alex, one of the producers of the show and Kara’s sister.” Alex shook hands with Lena. Lena had just traveled down to Norway and Alex was the first friendly face she had seen.

“Hello, I’m Lena.”

“How was your flight?” Alex started to walk outside the airport with Lena in tow.

“Not too good actually. I was so nervous that I couldn’t get any sleep on the way over.” Lena confessed as she looked around the small town. Everything was trees and small houses. Lena had just flown from all the way from California to New York and then she had taken a private jet to Norway. All in all, it had taken her nearly two days to get her and the trip was not even over yet.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Are you still feeling like that?” Alex told her as she opened up the Jeeps door for Lena.

“Yes!” Lena let out a little laugh. “More and more now.” She admitted as she sat on the back seat of the car.

Alex joined her and then she gestured for the driver to start the car.

“It can be a bit daunting, but you shouldn’t worry too much. Kara’s an expert, having been the first female Navy SEAL and all, you know?” Alex tried to appease her nerves.

Lena shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”

“I am! My sister’s the person you want by your side during an adventure in the middle of a deep Norwegian forest. Trust me on that!” Alex insisted. “Plus you chose the easiest level, so there really isn’t anything to worry about.”

Lena smiled at the other woman with kindness. “This is TV show after all, right? I don’t know what’s got me with all these jitters.” She laughed it off.

“So, now we’ll be going to catch another flight. A helicopter this time, and then we’ll be off to meet Kara. She’s very excited to meet you!” Alex informed her as they made their way through a countryside road.

It took them about an hour to get to the helicopter.

Lena had totally been bullshitting Alex. The closer they got to start the adventure, the more nauseous she felt.

She got out of the Jeep and followed Alex to a black helicopter. This was not Lena’s first time riding one, she even knew how to pilot one... so… no biggie.

“So tell me, what made you change your mind?” Alex asked her when they were in the helicopter, except that Lena could not really hear her voice, but instead heard her voice through a headset they had given her to wear.

“Do you remember Samantha Arias? She was on the show about three years back?” Lena asked Alex.

“Actually I do, yeah… she’s your CFO now, right?” Alex asked back.

Lena nodded. “Yup. Well… she’s the reason I changed my mind. She says this experience transformed her life.”

“That’s so cool. It makes me really happy to hear that. Make sure you tell that to Kara, she’ll love it.” Alex smiled with warmth. Lena could really tell that she was really proud of her sister.

“How long have you been doing this?” Lena asked as way of making conversation.

“Well, Kara got this injury on her leg and… I convinced her it was time to finally retire and she was so hard to convince. I was working as a production assistant back then and pitch the Supergirl show to my boss. Well, she loved it and after that I tried to convince Kara that her calling was to be out there in the wilderness teaching survival tactics to America.” Alex let out a little sigh. “My sister- she’s a bit hard on herself, always thinks she has to save… the world basically! So it really wasn’t easy to get her to change her life from actual world-saving to TV personality, but… with her injury and her wanting to be closer to family…. I managed to finally convince her. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Lena pondered on that for a moment. She remembered in her college years watching some episodes of Supergirl and seeing Kara doing all sorts of stuff to try and survive in a jungle or a desert. She got famous for drinking her pee if the severity of the situation called for it. She supposes that being a TV personality must pale when compared to being a Navy SEAL.

“Recently I made a big change as well… so far it has paid off. Hopefully Kara sees her life change on a positive light as well.” Lena commented.

“She does! It’s been what? Like twelve years since we started this and Kara is totally in her element by now. You’ll see.” Alex stated with confidence. “We’re here! Are you ready?”

Lena nodded, even though she was still not too sure about this.

Both women got out of the helicopter and then watched it fly away. “They’re going to go pick Kara up now. There’s the cameras. You can just go right over there and wait for her. Oh! And here’s what she wants you to carry!” Alex took off a small black backpack and gave it to Lena. “She’s says you’ll like it!”

Lena took the backpack and then started to open it. Soon enough Alex placed her hands on top of hers, effectively stopping her. “Could you do that in front of the cameras please?”

“Uh- sure! My bad!” Lena felt herself starting to blush with embarrassment as she turned and made her way to the cameras on a clearing in the woods.

“Hello, my name’s Schott, Winn Schott!” A short man shook Lena’s hand.

“Hi! My name’s-”

“Lena, Lena Luthor. CEO of LCorp and inventor of the nanotechnology we now all use on our phones.” Schott answered for her.

Lena let out a nervous laugh. “Yup, that’s me.” Then another man approached her and also shook her hand. “My name’s James and I’m in charge of sound. Pleasure to meet you Ms. Luthor.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

“The two of us together are crew number one. Crew number two and three are already along the path expecting you guys.” Schott explained to her.

“Okay I understand.”

“Should we get the cameras rolling?” James asked the other two.

“Let’s do it!” Schott placed the camera on his shoulder and apparently started recording.

_Oh God, it’s started._

“Um- Hi!” Lena waved to the camera. “I’m Lena Luthor and I’ve been told to stay here in this clearing and wait for Kara. Oh! Kara wanted me to have this backpack.” Lena took off the black backpack Alex had just given her and started to open it up in front of the camera.

“Let’s see here… This is a- I have no idea what this is actually.” Lena looked up at the camera with a confused face and then watched as James gave her a thumbs up.

She then took out what seemed like a stick with a string tied to it…?

“This is a- a bow perhaps?” Lena told the camera. “Anyways, I’m here in- I don’t know where I am exactly.” She laughed nervously at the camera again. “I know I’m in Norway though. Supposedly Kara will be here any minute now to whisk me away on a two-day adventure in the forest. Wish me luck!”

After a while Lena started to walk around the clearing with the camera crew in tow. How long was Kara going to take?

“I wasn’t really looking forward to this.” She told the camera. “I’m not much of an outdoorsy person so… I have no idea what I’m doing here. I think it’ll be interesting getting to hang out with Kara though. She can probably teach me a lot.” Lena confessed. Next thing she knew, she could hear the helicopter returning.

She turned to look for it, but could still not see it.

Then rounding the corner of a not-so-distant mountain, the helicopter finally came into view. Kara Danvers was standing on the landing skids, holding on to a grab bar on the outside of the flying vehicle.

The wind was tussling her blonde ponytail and she was looking sharp with khaki pants and a black jacket. She looked extremely badass.

Lena turned to look at the camera with raised eyebrows. She was impressed.

The helicopter was incredibly loud and the wind nearly threw Lena’s balance off.

Kara quickly got off the helicopter with a big backpack in hand.

“Hello Lena! Put this on.” Lena pushed the little backpack she already had to the area behind her arm and then turned her back as Kara helped her put on the bigger (and heavier) backpack.

“C’mon let’s go!” Kara waved at her to follow her to the helicopter.

Lena stepped inside and so did Schott and James.

“We’re going to jump inside a lake and then swim our way to the shore!” Kara yelled at the camera as loud as she could. “From there we are going to be hiking six miles west near a river, down a mountain another 5 miles and then we'll reach our extraction point at the base!”

“Lena are you ready?” Kara turned to now yell at her.

God this woman was beautiful. Her steely blue eyes were really intense.

“I’m sorry, what?” Lena yelled back.

Kara moved her mouth closer to Lena’s ear and repeated what she had just said.

“We’re going to do what now?!” Lena was panicking. She did not want to jump off of a helicopter into a freezing-cold lake!

Kara’s reaction was to laugh. “You’ll be fine, I promise! Our backpacks are floating devices as well.” She continued to shout in order to be heard.

The helicopter took them to the middle of a lake and as Lena looked down she could feel her heart beating a mile a minute.

“On the count of three, okay?” Kara yelled at her and then took her hand. “One, two… three.”

Lena closed her eyes, and more than falling of her own volition, she felt herself being dragged forward by the TV host.

Here goes nothing!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thank you for giving this crazy idea a chance.
> 
> This fic, hopefully (fingers crossed) will be a short one. Meaning less than 35,000 words.  
> But I don't know... sometimes I feel like I'm discovering the story instead of writing it.  
> I'm writing this because I am most certainly and outdoorsy person and I terribly miss being out in the wilderness.
> 
> Anyways, wish me luck and let me know what you think!


	2. Hare Carcass

The freezing water felt like thousands of needles were prickling Lena’s skin. It was excruciating. Next thing she knew she felt someone grabbing her by the backpack strap on her shoulder and pulling her up.

“You okay?” Kara was right there beside her in the water, breathing hard. A drone was just behind her, recording everything.

Lena tried to take a deep breath, but some of the water had gotten to her lungs and she was now coughing up some of it.

Kara then took her backpack off and brought it to the water surface. “Hold on to this.”

Lena placed both of her hands on the backpack and held on for dear life.

“Kick with me, okay?” Kara told her and then the both of them started swimming to the shore.

It was the beginning of April and Norway was unforgivably cold. Lena just wanted the feeling to end. She suddenly pictured herself in bed, all comfy and warm and then the reality of Kara’s face right next to her, asking her to _muscle it out_ , came crashing down on her life a brick made of ice.

At least two minutes in, Lena felt her body starting to go numb.

“Quick! Keep goin’!” Kara shouted as she pulled her forward.

Eventually they got to the shore. Which was not even that far away objectively speaking, but emotionally, Lena had just swam to the end of the world.

“There you go! You did really good Lena.” Kara told her and immediately a filming crew was right next to them. With Alex standing just behind the cameras.

Lena looked to them, they were all completely dry and wearing big bumpy jackets and helmets.

That seemed nice… for them.

Piercing blue eyes were right in front of her. “Take off your clothes.” Kara ordered her.

Lena could barely think straight and no, it was not because Kara was an incredibly good-looking woman, (Lena had seen pictures and even whole episodes of her shows, but she had never realized how good-looking Kara actually was until she saw her in person) it was because all her brain could process right now was the cold.

Cold.

Cold.

Cold.

Cold.

“C’mon I’ll help you!” Kara helped her stand up and then pulled the zipper of her jacket down. They were on a grassy and rocky field at the lake’s shore, big green mountains all around them. It was gorgeous but right now Lena could not care less.

Suddenly turning to the camera, Kara said: “The human body can survive in 40 degree oF water for about ten to fifteen m-minutes before the muscles get weak and they lose both c-coordination and strength, which p-pretty much happens because the blood moves away from the e-extremities and towards the core of the body.” Kara was shivering as she spoke to the camera and helped Lena take off her clothes all at the same time.

“Lena and I just t-took a 44 degree oF bath, so we should be okay as long as we takes t-these off and get dry as soon as p-possible. Otherwise our b-bodies’ temperature may continue to drop, which is exactly what we d-don’t want because that m-may lead to hypothermia.” Kara continued to explain.

Lena, now only wearing a sports bra and feeling colder than ever, watched as Kara took out a towel off of her own backpack and gave it to her.

“You have another set of clothes in your backpack.” The TV host informed her. “You can just go right ahead and change, they’re not going to be filming that.”

Kara was still wearing all of her wet clothes and only when she saw that Lena had understood her and was actively drying herself and then looking for a change of clothes, did she start to take her own clothing as well.

“What did you just say about hypothermia?” Lena asked her as she finished putting on a new sports bra.

“Right, yeah…” Kara acknowledged her question as she took off her shirt. “Hypothermia is what happens when the body cannot generate enough heat to compensate for the warmth it’s losing. Its symptoms include sleepiness, clumsiness, confusion and even slurred speech. Basically… you seem drunk.” Kara then took off her bra.

Lena immediately turned to look away, the cameras were now filming the scenery, but the new sound guy was still honing in on everything Kara was saying.

“We don’t really need to worry about that though. Did you find the socks and everything?” Kara asked her as she took off her pants.

Lena felt herself warming up right away. “I did yeah… and the new shoes too.”

After Kara finished getting dressed, the both of them sat by a rock, three people all around them both filming and recording everything.

 **“** Okay so, you’ve got your GoPro here.” Alex gave Lena a camera wrapped in a harness for Lena to wear around her chest. “Sometimes I’m going to ask you to angle it up so that it can film your face, and other times you’re gonna keep it up front just like this.” She explained to Lena.

“Kara, you good?” Alex asked her sister.

Kara nodded. “Yeah, all good.” She gave her sister a thumbs up.

“Okay, now we’ll film your commentary about what just happened.” Alex told Lena. “C’mon, stand by the lake.”

Okay this was just too much. Lena just wanted to sit and calm down for a little bit after getting the fright of a lifetime. Either way she did as told and stood by the lake.

“Hi I’m Lena. What’s your name?” Lena asked to the new camera guy.

“Hello. My name’s Querl, but everybody here calls me Brainy.” The guy told her. Lena smiled at him and nodded.

“This here is Hank.” Alex pointed with her thumb to the new sound guy, who simply nodded at Lena in acknowledgement. “Okay Lena, just give us a general sense of what just happened and what was going through your mind, etc.”

Lena nodded and then took in a deep breath. “Yeah, right… umm- Well, we just jumped from a helicopter into a freezing-cold lake, that was- what can I say? That was simply crazy. Never in my life had I been that cold! Kara helped me get to shore, I think she basically dragged me the whole way, I have no idea what I was doing. Next thing you know Kara Supergirl Danvers is undressing me on cable TV… this show is insane!” Lena started to freak out all on her own from simply recollecting what had happened a few minutes prior.

“I requested the easy level! What were you guys even thinking?!” Lena asked the camera and then watched as Alex gave a cut gesture to Brainy.

Okay, that was obviously not going to make the cut.

“Thank you Lena. Now we’ll do Kara, you can just wait by the rock there.” Alex instructed her.

Lena went to sit down. She then watched as Kara walked over to the cameras.

“Well, the adventure just started and I believe we just scared the hell out of Lena Luthor, inventor, scientist and CEO of LCorp, the new ‘it’ company that is innovating with nanotechnology!” She said as way of introduction.

“I really just wanted to introduce Lena to the show in a way that would completely throw her off because that’s what we are all about: getting out of your comfort zone and digging deep to see if you’ve got what it takes and- and I just have to say that Lena was level-headed all through it and just proved that she is up for any challenge that comes her way. What a privilege to have her on my show and I can’t wait to keep going with the adventure. I’m more than sure that she’ll love everything that we have in store for her!”

Alex said _cut_.

And then Kara made her way back to Lena. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m hanging in there I guess…” Lena answered with a small voice. “That was insane!” she now said in a high pitch.

“It was!” Kara laughed. “C’mon! Let’s get going. Moving our bodies will help us warm up.”

Together they started to walk further into the trees.

“Now we’ll go up this mountain here and make camp at the top. It’s going to get dark in about 5 hours, so… we better hurry.” Kara told her as they hiked through the forest.

“So… the Lena Luthor…” Kara said with an awed look. “What made you come to this trip with me?”

Lena sighed. She supposed her answer could not be _I have no idea why I’m doing this_.

“Umm… remember Samantha Arias?” Lena asked instead.

“Yeah I do, we had her on the show about three years back.” Kara answered her with a smile.

“Well… she convinced me to come.” Lena answered.

Kara laughed. “So it took some convincing, huh?”

“Yeah… You’re going to hate me for this, but… I’m not really an outdoorsy person.” Lena admitted.

“Oh that’s okay. I’m just happy that you’re here. I was very interested in meeting you.” Kara told her with a bashful look.

“You’re really into nanotech or something?” Lena quipped.

Kara laughed some more. “No no no… none of that. I’m just into smart people. I like talking to them and figuring out how their minds works.”

“Oh Gosh… you don’t want to know how _my_ mind works, believe me!” Lena bulged her eyes at the camera.

Kara giggled at that. “Oh but I do! I mean- I think you single-handedly brought us into the twenty first century! Cellphones with batteries that last for three days? That’s just insane! Not to mention all the wavelength communication stuff that I don’t even understand!”

Lena was more than impressed now. It seemed that Kara had done her homework or at the very least she had read the research some production assistant guy had given her about Lena.

“I’m just happy that something I did ended up being a force for good.” Lena smiled warmly at Kara.

Suddenly, as she looked into Kara’s intense blue eyes, Lena felt like the two of them were having a _moment_.

Then Kara looked to something just behind Lena. “What’s that?”

Lena turned, but all she could see where a bunch of trees. “What?” Should she be scared?

“I think- come! Let’s look at what’s behind that tree.” Kara said as she walked towards whatever it was that she had seen.

Lena followed just behind her, until they came face to face with bushes and more bushes. “Would you look at that!” Kara said as she crouched down.

“What is it? I don’t see it.” Lena crouched down as well.

“There… between the bushes.” Kara pointed with her index finger.

Lena tried to see, but… she only saw leaves and branches.

Then Kara pressed the side of her face against Lena’s. “Right there, do you see it?” She pointed again and Lena was feeling a bit distracted by having Kara's face so close to her own. The other woman, unlike Lena, was already very warm.

Lena blinked away her distraction and then payed attention to what Kara was pointing at. It was a brown hare, trapped between the bushes… it seemed already dead.

“That’s dinner right there!” Kara said with enthusiasm.

What… the… fuck…? What if it died from a disease or something?

“Go get it!” Kara told her.

Lena stood up and backed away from the bushes. “You want me to go into some bushes to get the dead body of a rabbit?!?”

“That’s actually a hare.” Kara corrected her as she stood up as well and started to walk towards her.

“I know it’s a hare! That’s beside the point!” Lena was freaking out again.

Kara then placed a calming hand on Lena’s forearm. “I’ll be here the whole time. C’mon! Go get us dinner!”

Lena did so not want to do this, but the look of Kara’s steely blue eyes was killing her. She looked so… enthusiastic, almost filled with child-like wonder.

Lena closed her eyes, took in a deep breath and then sighed. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

She went back to the bushes and crouched down, crawling her way among the bushes and the branches. How the fuck had Kara seen the hare from all the way over there?! This woman was clearly not a normal human being.

She reached its tiny brown paw and pulled on it, dragging the body out with her.

Lena felt like puking. She never in her entire life had touched the body of a dead animal.

“Here you go.” Lena said with disdain, once she had made her way out of the bushes along with the hare.

“Amazing! You did such a good job.” Kara literally patted her on the shoulder and worst of all… it felt so good to be praised by her.

_Keep it together Luthor!_

Kara then took the hare and made Lena carry it in her backpack.

_Gross._

“That’s gonna make a really nice dinner. You’ll see!” Kara told her as they made their way back to the path along the trees.

Lena decided not to reply anything to what Kara had just said, but then Alex made her stand by a rock and talk about what had just happened in front of a camera.

“I don’t normally do this… as you can imagine.” Lena told the camera. “So… Supergirl here is definitively taking me out of my comfort zone…

"I uh- to be honest… I never in my life thought I’d be dragging the carcass of a hare out of some bushes.” Lena raised her eyebrows in complete disgust. “I don’t even want to think about what Kara’s going to do to cook that up!”

After that, it was Kara’s turn.

“There you have it folks. Lena is a true champ. What a gal! I could tell she was a bit uncomfortable, but she went and got that hare out of there for us to eat for dinner and that just really shows you that she’s more than willing to dig deep and push herself to do things even though they may be difficult or scary. Would not expect any less from LCorp’s CEO!” Kara was smiling like a big idiot as she spoke about Lena in the kindest of ways.

This was beyond strange. Reality TV was weird.

Later on, both women continued their way through the deep forest and up the mountain, filming crew in tow.

“Later tonight I’ll teach you how to skin it!” Kara told Lena.

“You’ll teach me what now?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't Kara just adorable? hehehehe
> 
> Let me know what you guys think!


	3. Rock Climbing

“Kara, could you come over real quick?” Alex asked her sister after they had been walking in the woods for about an hour.

“Wha- Uh okay yeah.” Kara responded and Lena watched as she stepped a bit back to talk to her producer.

“So listen, for the ‘emotional talk’ part…” Alex started.

Kara nodded. “I know, I know… nothing about her brother or mother. I’ll stick to her career and the nanotech… and her being an inspiration to other women, etc.”

“Okay yeah, good. Just- remember that she could sue us okay? We’re contractually obligated to stick to only those topics.” Alex warned.

Lena felt really awkward about all of this because they were talking about her only a few feet away and she could perfectly hear everything that they were saying.

“I will. Don’t worry.” Kara appeased her sister and then cheerily turned back to talk to Lena.

“So Lena… let’s take a little water break!” Kara pointed to a patch of grass (or was it moss?) under a tree for her and Lena to sit down.

This was just about the least spontaneous break Lena had ever taken.

She nodded to Kara and sat down in the designated place, where the camera was already pointing at.

Kara sat right beside her and then took out a water bottle and drank. Afterwards she let out a big sigh, as if the water had refreshed her completely. When in fact Lena knew that not two seconds ago she had drank an entire bottle already.

“So… life, huh?” Kara said to Lena with a little smolder in her eyes.

Lena laughed at her.

Kara then looked to Alex. “Please edit that out! Let me try again…” She cleared her throat and then turned to Lena with another smoldering look, albeit a more reserved one. “So how did you come up with the idea for the nanotech?”

“Well… it really isn’t that original, is it? Everybody at some point has thought that it’d be cool to be able to control ants… I just worked off of that but on an even smaller scale.” Lena answered frankly.

Alex intervened. “Lena you- you’re doing great. This is almost perfect, but… what about the story you gave the New York Times? You were in the lab and your friend’s daughter broke her ant colony… and you wished you could order them all back to place…? Could you tell _that_ story?”

Lena blinked blankly at Alex for a few moments. “Right. Yeah of course.”

“Okay, let’s run it from the top.” Alex said.

Kara once again turned to Lena with a smoldering look, the kind that let the viewers know she was thinking really deep thoughts. “Lena, how did you come up with the nanotech?”

“One afternoon, my friend and colleague Sam, had brought her daughter to work because she could not find a nanny and, Ruby—that’s her name—Ruby, she had brought with her this ant colony… it was something they had bought on Amazon or something-”

“-Cut!” Alex interjected.

Lena looked to her in bewilderment.

“That was so good Lena! Almost perfect! But you can’t say a brand name like Amazon all of the sudden, they’re not sponsoring our show so… We really can’t.” Alex informed her.

“Uh- okay, I’m sorry.” Lena felt herself blushing.

“It’s no problem. Let’s just run it from the top. Kara go ahead and get us started.”

Kara nodded and _again_ did the same face and asked the same question to Lena.

Lena started to once again tell the story, this time omitting the fact that Ruby had acquired the ant colony on Amazon.

“So they were everywhere and one of them even bit one of my lab assistants and- and- well… you know I had this thought about how it would be much easier to clean all that mess if we could control ants. That was just a random thought, but eventually it led me on the path to wanting to build really tiny robots… I just- I did it on a microscopical level of course. But yeah… it’s been almost a decade-long project, my life’s work basically.” Lena concluded.

“And now Ruby’s all grown up?” Kara asked her with a smile.

That question threw Lena for a loop, what did that have to do with anything? “Yeah, she’s sixteen now, doing SAT prep and everything.”

“It must’ve felt great to finish such a big project.” Kara tried again.

“It did feel great. I- uh, I never thought it would become such a crucial tool for so many other industries: airplanes, phones, medicine- originally I thought they would end up becoming some sort of tech toy for kids, but as I went smaller and smaller, I realized it could be used in plastic surgery and- well… eventually it led to all of this right now.”

“Here I was thinking that you had it all figured out!” Kara commented.

Lena shook her head. “No no, I had no idea, but it’s what happens with science, right? You take someone else’s work and built upon it. I myself used mathematical theories that were not originally mine for the nanotech. It’s a very collaborative field and that’s one of the things I love most about it.”

“Well, you should feel nothing but pride. What an accomplishment and at only 30 years old! You truly are an inspiration for me and for so many other women.” Kara complimented with sincerity.

“Thank you for saying that.” Lena smiled with tenderness at Kara.

Maybe they had stumbled their way into this conversation, but eventually Kara had really made her feel at ease.

“Okay well, let’s get this show on the road.” Kara stood up and patted her legs for a bit trying to get some dirt off of her pants, Lena followed her and together they got back to the path through the trees.

“That was great you guys!” Alex praised them as she and the camera crew walked alongside them.

“Thanks.” Kara answered her from the front of the pack.

Lena looked at her hands for a moment and realized that her nails had turned purple from the cold.

That was bad.

She brought her hands up to her mouth and started blowing hot breath on them. Suddenly she crashed against Kara’s back.

“Don’t do that.” Kara quickly took Lena’s hands in hers. “You’re effectively wetting your hands with your breath and that’s only going to make them colder. Just-” Kara covered Lena’s hands with her own. They were so warm, it was as if Kara was literally made out of sunshine.

Lena had her eyes completely focused on Kara’s hands. They felt so incredibly nice. She then looked up for a moment and then did a double take, Kara was staring at her in the most intense of way.

It was- _powerful_.

“Everything okay?” Lena asked Kara.

Kara blinked for a moment. “Yeah, yeah of course. I’m- I’m sorry.” The TV host then let go of Lena’s hands and turned to keep on walking. “Just place them under your armpits, that might help.” Kara suggested as she kept on walking ahead.

Lena’s heart had been beating a mile a minute because of that interaction alone and now she was worried that the mic she had on would catch that.

How embarrassing!

“I’m thinking that perhaps we should use some rope here…” Kara started to say, which made Lena look up to see what she was referring to, only to realize they stood before a giant rock wall. “What do you think?” Kara asked Lena directly.

“I have a Bachelor’s degree, two Masters and a PhD, but I have no idea what to think about _that_.” Lena answered. “Shouldn’t we just go around it?”

“No! C’mon! We could climb this and then we’d be right there. It would cut our time for like an hour!” Kara argued.

“Or it could cut our time short altogether…” Lena remarked sarcastically.

Kara leaned her head back in laughter. “Don’t worry. That won’t happen. I can go first and then throw you a security line.”

“Yeah okay, why don’t we do exactly that?” Lena said with even more sarcasm to the camera.

To which Kara replied with a cheery _Let’s do it_ and started to take out some rope from her backpack.

Immediately Alex gave Lena a helmet.

“Thanks!” Lena said as she bulged her eyes at the foreign object. If nothing bad was going to happen then why the fuck did she need a helmet?

Lena glanced at Kara for a moment. She was now putting on a helmet as well.

Dear god.

Lena instantly placed the helmet on her head.

Kara then walked towards her and pulled her with her to face the wall. A black rope was already there. “You grab this with your left hand and, no matter what happens, you don’t let go.”

What the fuck?

Then Kara gave her some more instructions regarding rock climbing.

After finishing the lesson, Kara then started climbing up the rock wall.

Lena wanted to vomit as she watched Kara go up and up.

“Lena, what are you thinking right now?” Alex asked her.

Lena turned to the camera. “I’m thinking that I don’t want to go up there… I’m thinking that this is crazy…. That’s like a hundred foot wall… this is literally insane.”

Once Kara got up there. She looked down at Lena and yelled: “You just gotta muscle it out a little bit, there at the end.”

Lena gulped and then stood still for a moment, paralyzed with fear.

“I believe in you! You can do this Lena!” Kara shouted from the top.

Lena hooked the rope and grabbed it as Kara had instructed her earlier. She then stepped on one of the ridges and made her way up.

Everything was cold and a little wet: the rock, the rope, her hands, her face.

“You’re doing great Lena!” Kara told her.

As Lena looked up at _the_ Supergirl, she realized that Winn Schott and James were already up there with her filming.

She looked back down for a second and then her entire world caved in.

What was she thinking? Why had she come on this stupid thing?

She stepped up and concentrated on the rock wall in front of her, trying to figure out what to grab next and where to place her feet as she stepped up and up.

It took her at least 20 minutes, but eventually she got to the top.

Kara grabbed on to her by the hand and lifted her up with astonishing strength.

“You were so good! Look back. You did that all by yourself!” Kara cheered and then hugged her.

Suddenly there was a lot of noise and Lena watched as a helicopter picked Alex and the other crew up and flew them up the cliff.

“Why couldn’t we do _that_?” Lena asked with bitterness.

Kara shrugged. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Lena rolled her eyes and then heard Schott laughing at that.

She looked at the crew and smiled sheepishly.

“C’mon, we gotta find where to camp! It looks like it’s gonna rain soon.” Kara beckoned her with her hand as she walked between the rocky terrain, still filled with trees and more rocky mountains.

Lena took in a deep breath and asked for strength she knew she did not have. “I’m right behind you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Lena! XD
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> Let me know what you think.


	4. Spelunking

“We just need to find a flat surface where to sleep, or maybe we could build some sort of hammock… not sure.” Kara mentioned to Lena as they continued their walk along the rocky mountain filled with moss and full of deep foliage.

“Uh… sorry to break it to you Supergirl, but there isn’t going be a flat surface in here… plus with what would we even build a hammock?” Lena told her in all seriousness.

The TV host laughed. “Don’t worry about any of that. We’ll figure it out and everything will turn out great!” She guaranteed.

Lena turned to look at the camera with a face that showed her annoyance with Kara’s positivity.

“C’mon, you gotta keep up Lena!” Kara waved her over as they continued to make way through the rocks.

Lena held on tightly to the straps of her backpack and followed Kara, the camera crew composed of Querl- ‘Brainy’ and J’onn, right behind her.

Then she watched as James and Winn were both following Kara instead.

“What’s that there?” Lena pointed to a hole between some rocks, almost like a cavern.

Kara turned to look. “That’s a cavern.”

Lena felt like rolling her eyes at herself.

“Let’s go check it out!” Kara diverged from her original path and started walking straight to the ‘cavern’.

“Please tell me that there are no bears in Norway.” Lena begged.

“There are bears in Norway though, so I can’t tell you that. But there are very few of them…” Kara answered her and then proceeded to illuminate the place with a lantern.

“What if a bear lives there?” Lena said in a soft tone.

“It’s not hibernation season… plus, this is no terrain for a bear.” Kara then entered the cavern, leaving Lena behind.

Lena turned to the cameras.

“This is crazy! Wha the fuck- Can I say fuck?” She turned to look at Alex.

Alex shook her head.

“Oh sorry. But seriously! What is she doing in there? She could die! Everything’s so wet! She could slip and fall!”

“Lena!” Kara came back out. “We can camp here!”

_No._

_No._

_No fucking way._

“Come look!” Kara asked her with a big smile on her face.

Lena felt her entire body paralyzed with fear.

She looked from Kara’s big smile, to the dark cavern behind her as she had a small panic.

Then Kara took her hand and pulled her in. The thing about Kara’s hand is that it felt so warm, it was like receiving a hug with just that touch.

Lena walked into the darkness with Kara. There was a small light up ahead and Winn entered the cavern just behind them.

“Be careful, it’s a bit wet at the beginning.” Kara cautioned as she continued to lead Lena by the hand into the cavern.

They both had to crouch a little and in no time they arrived to a clearing.

It smelled… very particular. Not bad, but… _different_.

But it was not scary. Kara had left her lantern standing up in the middle of the space and it illuminated everything.

“What do you think?” Kara asked expectantly, her eyes shining due to the light from the lantern.

Lena let out a big breath she had been holding. This place was dry and it did not feel as cold as the outside.

“I think this is good. I- I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I actually like it.” Lena smiled shyly at Kara, suddenly feeling embarrassed about her previous antics.

“I’m glad you do!"

“Lena,” Alex called after her. “Come talk to the camera for a sec.”

Lena walked closer to the camera.

“What are your thoughts so far?” Alex asked her.

Lena looked from Winn to Alex and then to James. She could not believe that the three of them had squeezed in here as well.

“I think I’m very happy that I’m not going to be sleeping somewhere wet. It looked really sketchy at first, but it really isn’t’ that bad.”

Afterwards they each took out their sleeping bags and laid them on the floor.

Then Lena sat down on her sleeping back. “Are we going to make a fire or what?” She asked the TV host.

Kara nodded. “Yeah we will. C’mon, let’s head out and bring the hare.”

Kara turned to leave.

“Wait! Why are we going back out? It’s nice in here.” Lena complained.

Kara looked at her as if she was crazy. “We can’t cook in here, we’d die asphyxiated or because of smoke inhalation. We must build the fire outside the cavern instead.”

_Oh._

“Bring your backpack with you.” Kara instructed after regarding Lena’s dumbstruck face for about two seconds.

Lena should have known that. She is a scientist after all! Something about this environment was making her stupid, or stupid- _er_ if you asked Sam.

Lena got back up and followed Kara outside.

From Lena’s backpack Kara took out the bow thingy and another piece of wood that Lena had no idea it had been there.

“You place this part,” Kara started to explained as she crouched down a little outside the cave, just by a rock and some grass or moss? “On top of this.” Kara wrapped a stick with the string of the bow thingy and then perpendicularly placed the stick against the other flat piece of wood. “Then you rotate the stick with the bow drill like this.” Kara now pulled the bow back and forth, making the wrapped stick twist rapidly against the plank of wood.

“Go ahead Lena.” Kara stood up and asked Lena to take over.

Lena looked from the strange primitive contraption to Kara, to the camera held by Brainy. “Couldn’t we just bring a lighter?”

Kara laughed at that. “That’s no fun! Go ahead, just try it!” The woman then placed her hands on her hips and looked expectantly at Lena.

It was as if Lena was watching a Golden Retriever begging her to go out for a walk. It was almost too hard to believe that this woman was a Navy SEAL.

She was helpless against that face.

Lena kneeled down and grabbed the ‘bow drill’ as Kara had taught her.

“Wait! We need something for you to light. Gimme a sec.” The blonde woman jumped onto another rocks, which quite frankly… it was pretty hot and then she kneeled back down and started grabbing and examining the grass or moss? On the ground.

After that she started breaking branches from nearby trees.

Eventually she made her way back with these little strings of branches. “They’re wet so… I don’t think we’ll be able to light it so easily.”

Then Kara did the unimaginable, actually- she did the imaginable- just, not something Lena had dared to imagine quite yet: She zipped down her jacket and then took the hem of her shirt and lifted it up, trying to dry the little branches with the fabric. This meant that Lena was in full view of what was categorically a six-pack.

It was amazing.

Lena felt her mouth go dry and she gulped, trying to get some saliva into her throat.

It proved fruitless.

Lena started choking.

Kara immediately went to her aid, taking a water bottle out of Lena’s backpack and giving it to her. “You okay?” She started rubbing her hand in circular motions against Lena’s back as she watched her drinking some water.

“I’m good. Sorry about that.” Lena said in a sheepish tone.

“No need to apologize.” Kara then looked down to her hand holding the little branches inside her shirt. “Uh- here you go. Try to light this.”

Lena knew that her cheeks probably looked as red as a tomato right now. This was so embarrassing. She could only be thankful that this was for cable TV and not National Television.

She then took a few calming breaths and got to work pulling the bow drill back and forth while Kara kneeled right beside holding on to the plank below and blowing delicately on (the potential flame?). Never mind what she was blowing on, all that mattered was that she looked sexy as hell while doing it.

Trying to pay less attention to Kara’s pouty lips, Lena decided to focus on the motion of the stick.

This method, albeit primitive, was clever in its simplicity. Mostly because it saved you from having to roll the stick between the palms of your hand and most likely getting splinters and burning yourself with the friction.

In a few minutes a little smoke started to come out.

“Oh my God! It’s happening!” Lena felt a sort of cheery excitement in her chest. This was actually working.

Kara smiled at her for a moment, but quickly returned to blowing on the flame.

Then there was a spark.

Lena felt herself smile so wide and so big that later on she would wonder when was the last time that she had ever smiled like that.

“We did it!” She cheered.

Kara then carried the little bundle of flames over to the pile of wood. “No, _you_ did it. This was all you Lena.” She congratulated as she kept trying to create a bigger fire.

This had to be the happiest Lena had ever felt in quite a while. It was wonderful, magnificent, glorious-

“Pass me the hare.”

_God no!_

“C’mon, aren’t you hungry?” Kara quipped after watching Lena just staring at her with a blank face.

“Y-yeah, yeah of course!” Lena just needed to do this. She thought it would be fish, but hare… She had eaten that before, this shouldn’t be too hard.

But what had it died of!? What if it died a long while ago and it was all rotten inside?

_Gross._

Lena saw her trembling hand approaching the zipper of her backpack. She clenched her fist for a moment, willing it to stop shaking.

She then pulled the zipper down and opened the backpack, taking what felt one of the animal’s foot and pulling it slowly.

Well, apparently she had taken too long because now she felt Kara’s hand on top of hers and then the sweetest thing happened.

Kara whispered right next to her ear.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I was just overthinking everything.” Lena whispered back.

“Okay.”

Then Kara took the hare from her and then pulled a knife from one of the pockets of her pants.

“Okay so, you’re gonna want to cut through this middle part here, it doesn’t have to be exact or anything.” Kara pointed with her index finger to the back of the rabbit.

“Kara… how do you know this thing isn’t rotten inside?” Lena asked in a small voice.

Kara looked at Lena for a moment and then lifted the hare up to her own face. “Because it doesn’t smell. See?” She offered Lena the animal for her to smell it as well.

Lena pulled back. “I’ll take your word for it…”

“Here you go.” Kara gave the knife to Lena.

Her hand was moving to take the knife before her brain could process what she had just done.

“Okay just cut right here, enough so that you can introduce at least two fingers.” Kara continued to instruct.

And as Lena lowered the knife to where Kara had pointed, in this terribly cold climate, she felt a drop of cold sweat travel down her back.

“Just a little more strength.” Kara guided her with her hand.

It literally felt like cutting a piece of fabric.

“That’s enough, you don’t need to cut the meat… not yet at least.” Kara guided Lena’s hand back.

“Now you’re going to introduce your fingers in here and you’re going to pull with all of your strength.”

Lena felt the blood in her body leaving her as she introduced her fingers .

“Just imagine that it had a little t-shirt and little pants and now you have to take them off for a bath.” Kara quipped…? At least Lena thought it sounded like a joke

Lena pulled, and the sensation of the skin detaching itself from the hare’s meat was disturbing to say the least.

Then Lena stopped. “Kara, could you please take over? This really isn’t my thing.”

Kara looked to her for a moment. “Yes, of course. No worries. You’ve done most of the job anyways.”

In like a second, the hare no longer had any skin.

“Lena come here.” Alex called her over again.

Lena took in a deep breath. Having to make a comment about everything was getting tiresome.

“Yeah well… I lit a fire. A thing I’ve only ever accomplished before by fucking up at the lab. Sorry about the cuss word! My bad! Although you’ll probably just bleep that out, right?” Lena looked to Alex for confirmation, who nodded her answer.

“Yeah okay. And- well… The whole rabbit thing is probably going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life, so… now I have that to look forward to.”

She then heard Kara laugh at that behind her back.

Lena turned to address Kara. “Don’t laugh!” She wined.

Kara laughed some more. “Sorry- I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just find you hilarious.”

Lena felt her cheeks warming up at that.

“Any last comments Lena?” Alex asked her.

Lena turned to look back at the camera. “Umm… no, I have nothing more to say. Thank you!”

“Okay,” Alex said. “Now it’s time for another conversation between you two.” She then made Winn position the camera near the fire, where Kara was already cooking the hare.

Lena sat down next to Kara. The fire felt so nice and warm and suddenly she looked over to the scenery and realized that she was in a beautiful spot. The air smelled clean and even though it was really cloudy, everything felt serene and pure.

“So Lena,” Kara bumped her shoulder against hers. “If you could travel back in time and talk to your younger self, the Lena right after college and before starting her life’s project, what would you say to her?”

“Nothing. I don’t- You see, everything has led me to this so, if I could time travel I would not go back and risk disturbing my path. Plus, if I ever met myself from the future, that would just make me drop my current project to start working on time-traveling instead.”

Kara leaned her head back in laughter. “You really took that question seriously!”

After a beat, she tried again. “What do you think you mean to the women of the 21stcentury?”

Lena shrugged. “Whatever it is that they need me to mean…? I don’t know… If I’m ever to become a symbol for _anyone_ I take it that flexibility is more than required because, I might mean empowerment to some women, but I might mean privilege to others, y’know? Something to fight against or oppose. I take it what matters is that you are able to motivate people to pursue their individuals paths.”

Kara seemed to be taken aback by Lena’s answer. “What do you mean when you say ‘privilege’?

“Well… because I am. I went to the best schools, had the best resources and networking for investors. I’m not saying it’s been easy, but it has been easier than most or at least than others.” Lena tried to elaborate.

“So… you’d want to be a symbol for that?” Kara seemed confused.

“Yes of course. I would want to be an example of a systemic problem when it comes to the tech industry and that is that being white and rich goes a long way. I don’t want to become a symbol like: ‘she did it all on her own’ or ‘she pulled herself up by her bootstraps’ because I really didn’t and I wouldn’t ever want to take from the women that actually have. So if I become a symbol for privilege then… then that might piss someone off and- and I think that’s actually a good thing. It can motivate change. The tech industry is not for everybody, but it _should_ be for _anybody_.”

Kara blinked for a moment. “You’re- you’re very frank about this. It’s- it’s very… it’s refreshing.”

Lena stretched her lips across her face in a demure gesture. “It’s not like I can pretend about this.”

“No no, you’re selling yourself short… I know a lot of people from your background that nevertheless attribute their success exclusively to hard-work.”

Lena nodded, not wanting to expressly admit that she knew those kinds of people as well.

“How about you? To what do you attribute your success?” Lena asked Kara instead.

“Me?” Kara asked in surprise and then turned to look at her sister as if asking her for permission to answer Lena’s question.

Then Alex interjected. “Umm- Lena, this is not actually a conversation… it’s more of an interview so, this is about Kara asking _you_ questions and not the other way around.” She explained.

“Oh… oh okay, I’m sorry.” Again Lena felt her cheeks become warm.

“Don’t worry about it, just keep going.” Alex dismissed Lena’s worries.

Lena turned to look at Kara, expecting another question, only to realize that the poor woman was blushing profusely. Lena had probably embarrassed her, poor woman.

After regaining some composure, Kara put on her smoldering-interviewing face and continued. “What message would you want to send to a woman thinking about going into STEM?”

Lena’s eyes glanced to the left, trying to think of a good answer for Kara’s question.

“Again, I’m not the best person to give out advice about this. Just- just don’t give up. Do the work, trust the scientific method of trial and error, it’s super frustrating but it’s how we get to the truth and- and trust that it will see you through and you will eventually achieve your goal. H-having investors that believe in you is always a plus of course. I’m- I’m sorry I can’t really answer properly.” Lena suddenly felt a course of shame running through her body.

Kara placed a calming hand on top of her shoulder, her face showed a gentle smile. “You’ve said enough, don’t worry.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Let me know what you guys think ;)


	5. River Swimming

“I think the hare might be ready by now. Let’s go check!” Kara got up from where she had been sitting while interviewing Lena.

“Kara wait! We need your take on things. It’ll take like a second.” Alex asked her and Kara kept on going for a moment, taking the rabbit a little away from the fire and then turning back towards her sister and the cameras.

“To me Lena is a great person. She- she expresses herself candidly, which is very refreshing and she has a unique sense of humor, which really makes people feel comfortable around her. I think she’s a great human being, capable, hard working and honest.” Kara said to the camera right off the bat.

“Thank you.” Alex told her and then Kara looked sheepishly towards Lena.

On her part, Lena herself was blushing all over. She could tell it had even traveled down to her neck.

Kara’s words… they were probably the nicest thing anybody had said to her in her entire life.

“Come, let’s eat.”

Lena could feel her legs shaking as she walked towards the rabbit.

“It looks like I imagine a burned baby would look like…” Lena remarked as she sat down next to Kara.

Kara burst out laughing. “C’mon! It’s not that bad.”

Kara took out a knife from her pocked at cut a piece of meat.

Lena looked to Alex for a moment.

“You negotiated either wild game or fish…” Alex raised her hands in a _don’t blame me kind of gesture_.

Lena eyes then fell to the piece of meat on Kara’s knife.

She took the piece between her thumb and index finger and then slowly but surely she brought it up to her mouth as Kara watched expectantly.

It tasted like… nothing and the texture was gamey. It was overcooked and weird.

“Is there any salt around?” She asked Kara after swallowing down the first piece.

Kara laughed some more. “Of course there isn’t.”

Lena repeated those words in her mind: _Of course there isn’t_.

And that was the thing about this show, was it not? To be constantly unnecessarily uncomfortable.

“So what do you think?” Kara asked her as she herself took a bite.

“It doesn’t really taste like anything. It’s like eating unsalted chicken.” Lena observed.

Kara nodded. “That’s how I would describe it myself yeah.”

“We got it!” Alex exclaimed excitedly. “Lena, here we have some sandwiches. Do you like turkey?” The story producer then pointed to a bag James had been carrying all along.

Lena beamed. She did not know she was going to get to eat actual food.

She stood up excitedly and walked towards James, who then gave her a brown paper bag.

Lena took out the turkey sandwich and took a bite with gusto.

“We’ll be heading out shortly. If you need anything, Kara has a radio with her. If you get up to pee in the middle of the night, please try to record Kara sleeping with the GoPro you have around your neck. Our viewers always get a kick out of that.”

Lena continued to eat as she listened to Alex’s instructions, she then turned to see Kara continuing to eat the rabbit.

“Do you want some of my sandwich?” She offered.

Kara shook her head with a small smile and continued eating.

“Don’t even bother… she likes to keep the adventure as ‘authentic’ as possible… so we just let her be.”

 _Oh_.

Kara was really devoted to this. Good for her!

Lena felt like heaven when James also gave her some chocolate.

“You’re an angel. Have people told you that?” Lena asked the tall man.

James laughed. “I’ve been told a few times yes.”

“Well you are. God bless you James.”

After all of that, Lena said goodbye to the crew and then watched them climb a little ladder up a helicopter and leave.

Then she and Kara made their way back into the cavern. Lena felt true sorrow at having to put down the fire she had created.

“Here.” Kara put a blanket around Lena. “This will keep you warm.”

The moment Kara finished saying that was the moment Lena realized that the two of them were entirely alone. 

She wondered if Kara was into women and if so, if it was just too awkward to ask her out on a date in the middle of her show.

“Thank you.” Lena replied to Kara, deciding it was best to keep her thoughts to herself. She could always just Google Kara to find out about her sexuality and later ask the producers for her email.

“How are you liking the adventure so far?” Kara asked her.

The both of them sat perpendicular to the positioning of their sleeping bags, facing each other.

“I’ve loved it. Never in my life did I image I would do anything like this.” Lena answered with sincerity.

Kara’s reaction was a big smile. “I’m really happy to hear that. I hope that you also enjoy tomorrow.”

“I’m sure I will.” Lena assured her.

“Well… we should go to sleep. We have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.” Kara told her and then got herself into the sleeping bag, right next to Lena.

Lena did the same, the blanket Kara had just given her felt so nice that even if the sleeping bag felt initially cold, Lena knew that in no time it would be as warm as the blanket itself.

“It’s been a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you so much for accepting the invite.” Kara whispered into the night.

“Thank you for having me.” Lena whispered back.

Lena immediately drifted off to sleep. Her body had been so high strung for so long that the moment there was so peace it immediately shut down.

She dreamed of Kara.

The other woman was holding her hand as the both of them continued their trek through the Norwegian woods.

It was warm and Lena never wanted her to let go.

Together they made their way through a waterfall and the cold water woke Lena up from her dream instantly.

“Lena!” Kara shouted at her. “Lena c’mon!”

Lena tried to get her bearings of the situation. There was water everywhere on the cave floor. It was only a few millimeters, but still.

From up between the rocks more water kept dripping down with a few rocks coming down along with it.

Kara grabbed their backpacks and Lena leaned down to take the sleeping bag as she watched Kara take hers.

“Put it on top of your head!” Kara ordered.

Lena did as told and together they made their way to the cave’s exit.

There was a downpour outside. Like… Like a full on flood. It was dark and it was cold.

Kara and Lena stood at the edge of the cavern. “We can’t stay here. I’m afraid the cave’s ceiling might collapse from all the water.” Kara shouted in order to be heard above the falling rain.

Lena could feel her heart pumping blood like crazy.

“What do we do?!” She shouted back.

Then a lightning flashed and for a split second it looked like daylight.

“We need to reach the river!” Kara pulled Lena with her and the both of them started to make their way through the rain.

There were so many rocks and Lena could simply not go as fast as Kara.

She then felt herself being hoisted up. Kara was now carrying her piggy back style and all Lena could do now was try to hold on to the sleeping bags on top of their heads as best she could.

It seemed as if Lena weighted nothing for Kara as the TV host made her way through the wet rocks at a pretty good pace. It was still dark, but Kara trod on.

It was raining so bad that Lena knew the both of them were entirely soaked already, even if they had been using the sleeping bags for protection.

Eventually, they arrived at a grassy field were the path was a bit easier on Kara, and the trees up above were protecting them from the rain.

“Why the river? Won’t it be flooded?” Lena shouted.

“Possibly, but we need to reach lower ground because of the thunderstorm.” Kara shouted back.

“Kara.”

“Yes?”

“I can walk on my own here.”

Kara then crouched down until Lena’s feet reached the grass or the moss…?

“C’mon!” Kara shouted as she took Lena’s hand and pulled her with her.

Lena thought that this was almost like her dream, except entirely different.

The path became downhill now and suddenly Lena was too scared to trip and roll down until her body hit a tree.

“Kara!” She shouted.

Kara turned to look at her.

“I can’t do this!”

Kara looked at her with alarmed eyes for a split second. Then there was a big thunderous sound and Kara placed her hands on Lena’s chest and pushed her against a tree, also pressing her own body against Lena’s.

Lena did not understand what was happening, but next thing she knew, another tree was falling just behind Kara.

They were in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Lena leaned her head back against the tree, her eyes clenched shut out of utter fear. This was not the way she wanted to go. She wanted to die peacefully in bed.

“Lena!”

Lena opened her eyes. She felt Kara cupping her face.

“We’re going to make it through this, but I need you to keep going, okay?”

Lena shook her head. What had she gotten herself into?

“Look at me!” Kara shouted and Lena stared into her deep blue eyes, even in this darkness they were as intense as ever.

“We can make it. I know we can.” Kara told her with determination.

Next thing she knew they were running downhill, Lena felt her body filled with pure adrenaline as she and Kara ran as fast as they could, given the circumstances.

“There’s the river!” Kara yelled.

And Lena lifted her gaze. She could not see anything, it was still too dark. She would just have to trust that Kara was right.

They continued their way, Kara now carrying both sleeping bags pressed against her chest.

Suddenly they encountered a gulley quickly filling up with water. Kara immediately jumped down, the water reached a little past her knee.

“Jump. I’ll catch you!”

Lena did not even think it twice as she lunged her body towards Kara.

Kara literally caught her by the waist. Both of their faces getting up close and personal for a short moment.

They separated quickly and made their way across the gulley. There a wall of rocks, dirt and tree roots awaited at the other side.

“We’re close. We just need to keep going.”

Kara guided Lena to place her foot on her knee underwater and then climb on top of her shoulders.

It was difficult, but Kara’s body was built like a brick and Lena felt secure enough to proceed.

Once she was up, she held on to a root and hoisted herself up the rest of the way.

Then she looked down to Kara in horror. How was she going to make her way up?

Kara walked a bit back and then ran towards the wall of roots, jumping at the very last second and holding on to one of the roots. She then essentially climbed from root to root, exclusively using her upper body.

Lena extended her hand towards her to help her on the last bit and Kara took her hand and made her way up.

“Thanks. The river should be just up ahead.” Kara affirmed. She then took Lena’s hand and together they kept on walking through the rain and the trees and the flashes of lightning.

“We just need to get ourselves away from these trees.” Kara said loudly as they walked on.

Lena could feel her breath as erratic as ever. She was cold and wet and frightened, her entire survival tethered to the hand she was holding.

Soon enough the trees stopped and they reached the clearing just to the side of the river.

Lena could see the early light of the morning coming just over a faraway mountain.

“What now?” She asked Kara.

“Now we have to keep an eye out for a possible river flood.” Kara stretched out one of the sleeping bags and stepped closer to Lena, placing it above their heads.

Then she started to jog in place. “We can’t stop moving or we risk hypothermia.” She explained.

And so Lena joined her.

Kara then took out a radio from her backpack and tried to call for help.

All they got was static.

Lena could not believe all that had happened. It was beyond crazy. It was the stuff of nightmares!

“I know there’s a cave just across the river. If we could reach it and it was safe… we could light a fire for a short while, get warm.”

Lena looked to the river in question. Getting in there seemed like certain death.

“You really think we could make it across?” Lena asked her.

“I think so, yeah. We can’t swim straight though, we have to swim diagonally.” She explained. “You just hold on to me and I’ll take us to the other side.” Kara said with incredible confidence and somehow… Lena believed her.

“Let’s do it. I really don’t want to die from hypothermia.” Lena agreed.

Kara put on Lena’s backpack up front and kept her own backpack on her back. She had taken out some of the rope and tied a knot around herself and then around Lena.

Then together they made their way to the edge of the river. It was nearly daylight by now, but not quite.

A lightning illuminated everything for a moment and then Kara jumped in with Lena.

It was beyond cold. It was way colder than when they jumped in the lake. Lena could feel her heart thundering in her chest.

She could feel the river taking them downstream and for a moment she thought that this had been the worst possible idea in the entire world, then she felt Kara kicking her way forward and Lena suddenly snapped out of it and started kicking along with her.

Kara was also using her arms, it seemed as if her determination knew no bounds.

Then the worst thing that could have happened occurred.

She felt the strength of the river increase by a tenfold and instantly knew that they had been caught by the flood.

The strength of the current made Lena let go of Kara.

It all turned dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it folks...  
> Tune in for what happens next! Dun... dun... dunnnn!
> 
> Let me know what you guys think :)


	6. Fishing

Lena woke up coughing.

Her chest burned, but it was nothing compared to the numbness she felt in her entire body.

“Lena!” She heard someone yell her name.

Lena tried to open her eyes, but they were just so heavy.

She felt someone trying to lift her, heard them grunt as they tried to.

There was a strange feeling that came with the movement. One caused by a shift in temperature. Lena knew that if she left the place where she was, it would feel so bad. Right now she felt good in her numbness and when the stranger pulled her out, all she could feel was pain.

“Lena please! I’m hurt- I can’t-”

Lena opened her eyes immediately. “You’re hurt?”

Kara was looking down on her. “Lena?”

Lena started to cough up some water she tried to sit up and the moment she did, an incredible pain cursed through her entire body. It was like having a band-aid being ripped out from her entire back. She was on the shallow end of the river. Kara was kneeling right beside her. There was daylight but it was still cloudy.

She grunted in pain through her coughs.

“You’re okay. Y-you’re okay.” Kara told her as she held her by the shoulders. “C’mon.”

Lena knelt down on all fours for a moment in order to get up. She saw her reflection on the water. She had a gash above her brow and there was blood coming out of it. She stood up, her entire body screaming at her to get back down.

She looked to Kara, who was still kneeling. The other woman fared no better, part of her jacket was torn and it looked like her cheek was swelling with a bruise.

“I can’t g-get up on my own.” Kara told her as she held to the rope that still bound them together.

Lena panicked for second and then knelt back down on the water and helped Kara up.

“It’s m-my knee. I think I hit it a-against some r-rocks or something.”

Lena nodded her response, too scared to speak out loud and through the tone in her voice let Kara know just how terrified she felt.

Kara limped a bit, holding on to Lena’s shoulder as they both made their way to higher ground.

“We- we need to take off our clothes.” Kara said in a low tone.

Lena’s mind instantly went to when they had jumped into a lake and the consequences of staying with cold wet clothes for too long. They both stood now on top of the grass or the moss maybe and a canopy of trees was right in front of them, they were pale and thin, different from the trees where they previously were.

“The bark of those trees is extremely f-flammable.” Kara took out a knife from her pocket and with Lena’s help; she took off some of it from a nearby tree.

Kara let go of Lena and knelt down very slowly. Lena could clearly see that she was in pain. She took off her jacket and then her shirt and her bra. She then took out a radio from her pocket, extended its antenna and turned it on.

“Hello? Anybody?” Kara asked to the radio.

She quickly placed it on the ground standing up and then took out a lighter from another pocket and tried to light it against the bark she had previously collected.

Lena watched for a moment and then went to take off her clothes as well. She first touched the GoPro and wondered for a moment whether there was footage of what they had just gone through. Putting that thought to rest, she took off her jacket, sweater, shirt and undershirt. All the while Kara kept trying to light the bark.

Kara was wearing a backpack around her back, but the one that had been on her front was nowhere to be seen. Her trembling hands kept working on the lighter.

Lena watched Kara’s body for a moment. Her forearm was tone and clear cut, the muscles tensing and untensing as she tried with the lighter. Her shoulder was bruised too, purple marred her skin. Lena then watched her back, it was all muscles as well. This woman must be some kind of machine.

“It’s all wet.” Kara started to say, her voice defeated. “It- it won’t work.”

Lena crawled closer on all fours and suddenly felt dizzy. She tried to focus on Kara’s hand, the one that held the lighter. She took it from her and inspected it.

It was… wet.

She looked down to her own shoe and started to rub the spark wheel on the side of her shoe, on the rubber. She kept going at it for a while, it felt like forever before it started to sparkle.

Lena offered the lighter back to Kara. “Try it now.”

Kara looked at her with a stunned expression.

“My b-brother used to smoke and once I threw his lighter on the toilet because I – I was mad at him. Then he showed me that trick.” Lane said as way of explanation.

Kara tried again against the bark and it quickly lit up. She positioned the bark against a tree and kept cutting more bark and gathering it close to it.

She then started to take off her pants and gestured for Lena to do the same. Lena had to help her when it came to her left knee, but in the end they both managed to take it off. Lena did the same.

“P-panties too?” Lena asked her.

Kara nodded and then gestured for Lena to come closer. “Sit here, she gestured to her lap.” Lena looked there for just a second, but then shook her head and clenched her eyes shut. This was not the time to be having those kinds of thoughts.

She moved to sit on top of Kara, facing away from her, but then Kara stopped. “Your back to the fire.”

Lena gulped. She was still feeling super dizzy as she sat on top of Kara’s lap, facing her.

Kara immediately put her arms around her and pressed their bodies tightly together.

Her skin was cold. Just as cold as Lena’s.

Then she felt Kara take off her ponytail, letting her wet black hair out and she started to squeeze the water out.

Lena started to do the same with Kara’s hair.

“We’re gonna b-be okay.” Kara whispered to her ear.

“How d-d you know that?”

“I don’t know that. I just- I f-figured that's what I should say in a s-situation like this.”

“Has this ever happened to you before?” Lena whispered even lowered. She really did not want Kara to know just how scared she felt, even with the fire on her back warming her up a bit.

“Once in training, my partner fell in the water, so I- we- we sort of ended up like this. Except that I was dry and warm and he w-was wet and cold.”

Even though she knew it had been a matter of life or death, Lena still grimaced at the thought of Kara pressing her warm body against a naked man.

“I’ll keep us s-safe. I promise.” Kara told her.

Lena took in a deep breath and for a moment her chest separated from Kara’s. That is exactly when she noticed how warm it truly felt to be pressed up against her like this.

"I'm s-scared." Lena finally confessed.

"Don't be. Alex will not r-rest until she finds us. We just need to k-keep ourselves warm and hang tight." Kara reassured her, tightening her hold on Lena.

Lena clenched her eyes shut, wishing her current circumstances were completely different. Well, not completely. Kara she would keep. Everything else though? Everything else she would throw overboard.

"How's your knee?" Lena whispered to Kara's ear. "Let me know if I'm putting too much weight on it or s-something."

Kara scoffed. "Lena please! You're as light as a feather. Don't worry about that nonsense." She dismissed her worries.

Lena laughed a little at that as she tried to fight a blush rising towards her cheeks. "Does that mean you'll carry me the rest of the way?" 

_Oh my God! What was she doing? Was she actively flirting with Kara while they were in the middle of a life or death scenario?! What is wrong with her?_

"I will if you want me to." Kara retorted.

Lena immediately felt a surge of heat traveling down to her core.

_She could not get wet right now! Kara would notice that! CALM THE FUCK DOWN LUTHOR._

Lena took in a deep breath and then disguised it with a strange laugh.

"You feel really warm to me. Check my backpack; I think I have some dry pants there. I keep an extra pair ever since one of my guests ripped the seams of his pants on camera."

Lena nodded and stood up. For a split second she could not help but notice that Kara was left on eye-level with her crotch. Then she quickly went for the backpack and took out the pants Kara had told her about.

She was going commando on this thing because no way in hell was she going to put back on her cold wet panties.

She watched as Kara started to build some sort of contraption with tree branches and a rope tied to her backpack and started to hang their clothes on the contraption, next to the fire.

Lena pulled her weight by gathering more wood for the fire. When she came back she watched Kara in all her naked glory next to the river with a long stick, fishing. The muscles of her back were unbelievable, not to mention her ass.

She came back with a small fish and a medium-sized one. She cooked them both and gave the bigger one to Lena.

By then they had taken their clothes off of the contraption and put them on. They felt nice and warm, but smelled like pure smoke.

Lena ate as much as she could and then insisted to Kara that she should have some of hers, but Kara said that she was already full after eating the small fish and refused.

Lena did not really believe her, but she did not want to fight her about it either.

"There's another storm coming. We need to find shelter before it hits." Kara said after looking up at the sky for a few moments. "This Is really going to put a damper to the search party. I don't think a helicopter could fly under those circumstances."

"What about the radio? Getting anything?" Lena asked as she started to pick their stuff up and placed them inside Kara's backpack.

"Let's try it again." Kara picked it up and spoke. " Hello? Kara here. Hello? Anyone?"

"Try changing the frequency." Len suggested. If they could not reach the Surviving with Supergirl crew, maybe they could reach someone else.

Kara played with the dials of her radio. "There's not even any static Lena. I think- I think it might be broken."

Lena felt her stomach sinking.

Kara then looked over to the river were they had come from. " What worries me more is that the search is going to start back at the cave and they'll expand the radius little by little… and when they get to the river, if the new storm opens up a new path, they start looking towards that and not over here."

_Dear God. They were so fucked._

"We need to check this area tomorrow after the storm. If there's a new path or a bigger one, then we cannot simply stay put and wait for help. We will have to make our way back to them somehow." Kara explained succinctly.

Lena let out a defeated sigh. "Let's just focus on finding shelter first." She concluded with a severe tone.

Kara nodded and then tried to get up on her own, but then groaned in pain and fell to the ground. "It's nothing." She told Lena. "I just stepped wrong, but it's not as bad as it looks. I just gotta be careful." 

Lena nodded, trying not to let her face show just how worried she actually felt.

Kara tried to get up again, distributing her weight between her legs differently and then took Lena's hand and together they made their way deeper into the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading :)


	7. Rain

Lena sat at the cavern's entrance watching the torrential downpour falling down from the sky. Luckily enough, the cavern Kara had found for them was at an upwards angle, preventing the water from entering the little hole they now called home.

Lena felt tired, hungry, cold and scared and as she continued to watch nature's power in all its might.

"How's it looking?" Kara asked her from deeper within the cavern.

Together she and Kara had walked over two miles until they found this little crevice in a rock. Lena could feel her own two feet screaming at her in contempt. 

Lena turned for a moment to address Kara even if by doing so she could still not see her. "Honestly it looks worse than last night." She shouted to the darkness within the cavern.

Kara said nothing in return, and Lena continued to sit there watching.

She wondered if news of their disappearance had already reached mainstream media. Then she thought about her family. What would Lillian be thinking right now? _'Good riddance'_ probably.

The sky was so cloudy and Lena had no way of knowing the time, but she thought it was nearing night fall.

"Stop brooding over there." Kara shouted at her.

Lena scoffed. "I'm not brooding."

"You totally are." Kara's voice said to her.

Lena decided to enter deeper into the cave and make her way up back to Kara. The ceiling was not high enough for her to stand, so she had to crawl in all fours, which was rough on her knees.

She watched as Kara laid on the cold floor with the radio in her extended hands and a little flashlight between her teeth.

"Is it damaged? I thought It was working...?" Lena asked her as she laid on the floor next to her.

Kara took the flashlight off of her mouth before answering her. "We've been getting nothing but static so I figured maybe it's damaged."

"Then… you do know I'm an electrical engineer, right?"

Kara smiled at that and gave the radio to her. "Work your magic."

Lena sat up and looked at the radio. "Give me your knife." She asked Kara.

Kara took it out of her pocket and handed it over.

Lena unscrewed the radio open and observed it for a moment. "There's nothing to do here, it's not damaged. I thought perhaps the circuit board got a little wet, but it's fine."

"That's great to hear." Kara said with enthusiasm. "The problem must be the weather then." She concluded and Lena agreed with a nod.

The two of them stayed quiet for a moment. All Lena could think about was that the weather was a really big problem for everybody, and not just the radio.

"Tomorrow we'll go back to the river." Kara told her after sitting up as well. "From there we'll decide if we can make our way back or if It's best to wait to be rescued."

"I understand."

"Are you cold? Want me to cuddle you?" Kara asked her, her face pale in the dim light of the little flashlight.

"Are _you_ cold?" Lena asked back with a smirk.

"I am… wanna cuddle?" Kara admitted without any shame whatsoever.

Lena could not help laughing at that. "Sure, let's do it."

"Come'ere." Kara called her over to sit in front of her. Lena did and immediately Kara enveloped her.

"I'm so sorry about all of this." Kara told her in a soft voice. "My team researched the weather before filming this episode, they told me it would be nothing but showers… I'll completely understand if you want to sue us after all of this is over."

Lena could not believe what she was hearing. "Kara, I assure you that the last thing on my mind right now is a lawsuit."

Kara let out a little breath. "Still, I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"I won't."

"Okay."

Silence reigned between the two for a few moments.

"Is this the first time this has happened?" Lena broke the quietness in their little cavern.

Kara sighed and it tickled the area near Lena's cheek. "Three seasons and nothing like this had ever happened before."

"Lucky me." Lena said in defeat.

Kara let out a little amused giggle.

Lena started to smile at hearing Kara's laughter. "Do you think I'm funny?" She asked the other woman in a teasing manner and without any malice in her voice.

Kara stopped laughing immediately. "I think you have a dark sense of humor that I very much enjoy so… yeah, I think you're funny."

Lena felt her heart jump up with excitement upon hearing that. She had been told her entire life that she was intelligent, even beautiful… but never funny.

"You're quiet… why aren't you saying anything? Did I say something wrong?" Kara started to freak out.

Lena held tightly to Kara's arms around her stomach to try to appease her. "I was just thinking… That's- That's the first time someone has told me I'm funny."

"Really?" Kara asked in surprise. "I wouldn't have expected that, smart and funny usually go hand in hand."

Lena's smile widened. Kara not only thought she was funny, but also smart…

 _Interesting_.

"So I'm smart too, huh? Why don't you add _beautiful_ to the mix and then admit I'm the whole package?" Lena quipped in pretend-arrogance.

"You _are_ the whole package." Kara agreed in a rush and started to speak at a fast pace. "You're gorgeous, charismatic, kind, intelligent- that's why I insisted to the producers that we had to have you on the show- you're just so amaz- oh my God I cannot believe I said all of that!" Kara let go of Lena and not being able to get up and walk, she instead dragged herself away. "I'm so sorry."

Lena's ego had burst through the ceiling of the small cavern and was now soaring high above the clouds. She felt her own cheeks warming up and a big smile that would not leave her face no matter how hard she tried. She then turned around to look at Kara directly.

"So… you think I'm all of those things and you _insisted_ I be on the show… do you perhaps want my autograph Ms. Danvers?" Lena teased.

Kara still held the little flashlight in her hand, which allowed Lena to see her become red like a tomato.

Kara's shoulders un-clenched in what Lena could only guess was relief and she smiled the most precious smile Lena had seen as of yet. "I would very much appreciate that Ms. Luthor, but later… after we have gotten ourselves out of this mess."

Lena dragged herself closer to Kara and extended her hand towards her with a perfect smirk on her lips. "You've got yourself a deal."

Kara laughed at the same time that she shook Lena's hand. "Deal." She confirmed.

* * *

Nightfall brought with it a coldness Lena had never felt before. She stayed close to Kara as they both tried to fall asleep.

When Kara had turned off her flashlight after they got as comfortable as possible on the cavern's floor, Lena felt a sense of pure dread invade her spirit.

However, Kara decided to be the big spoon and placed one of her arms under the space left by Lena's neck not touching the floor, and the other one around Lena's stomach, making the sense of dread disappear.

Lena could not remember the last time she had shared such intimacy with another person.

She felt a bit warmer, reassured and, most importantly, she felt safe.

Even through the uncertainty, somehow having Kara's arms around her made Lena think everything would be alright in the end.

"Lena?" Kara whispered softly near her ear.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me something."

"What do you want me to tell you?"

"I dunno… anything."

Lena thought about Kara's request for a moment.

"I think I still haven't learned how to ride a bicycle…" Lena randomly confessed into the darkness.

"You think or you _know_?"

"I _know_." Lena corrected herself. "Last time I tried I was around six. I've never tried again."

Kara stayed quiet for a few seconds after that. "But you've been thinking about it." She stated instead of asking.

"I have, yes…" Lena admitted.

"Why?" Kara asked her in a low tender tone.

"Just before coming here- back in town I saw a couple in a tandem bike- it made me feel…" Lena paused in thought, trying to come up with the right word to describe how she felt. "inadequate."

"I never learned how to whistle…" Kara decided to share.

Lena laughed at that.

"How come you never learned how to ride a bike?" Kara took advantage of the lighter atmosphere her little confession had produced to ask a personal question to Lena.

"You know I'm adopted, right?" Lena asked to make sure they were on the same page, before she started answering Kara's question.

"I do yeah, I'm adopted too."

"You are?" This was news for Lena.

"I am, yeah. I was adopted when I was thirteen years old."

Lena tried to imagine a thirteen-year-old Kara and became highly amused while doing so.

"Why are you laughing?" Kara pressed her body tighter to Lena's to get her attention.

Lena stopped laughing altogether. "Sorry… I was just trying to imagine you at thirteen."

Kara let out a breathy sort of laugh. "Don't forget to add freckles to whatever it is that you're imagining, _lots and lots_ of freckles!"

Lena laughed out loud at that and Kara joined her.

After their laughter died down, Lena decided to get back on topic. "Anyways... I was adopted when I was four and my new family- the Luthors, they just didn't attribute that much importance to learning how to ride a bike. I know how to ride horses, motorcycles, I know how to fly airplanes, helicopters and I also know how to drive… but I dunno- there never was any time to learn how to bike."

Lena sighed.

"I sometimes think back on my childhood… I took piano lessons, I took dancing, Latin, fencing… and yet nobody bothered to teach me how to bike- by the time I worried about that myself I was already twenty years old and rejecting a biking date on the pier; simply too embarrassed to let that girl know I couldn't go biking with her because I didn't know how."

After a moment of quiet, Lena felt Kara turning her to lie on her back.

In spite of the darkness, she was able to see Kara's eyes shining through. Kara stroked some of Lena's hair behind her ear and then caressed her cheek with sweet affection.

"I'm sorry." Kara retracted her hand. "I don't know what came over me."

Lena took Kara's hand in hers and placed it back on the side of her face. "Don't stop. I liked it."

Kara let out a shaky breath as she continued to caress Lena's cheek. "You're so pretty."

Lena scoffed. "How can you tell in all this darkness?" She quipped, trying to deflect the weight of Kara's words.

Kara's thumb moved to stroke one of Lena's eyebrows. "You're the kind of pretty that can be seen even when is dark." She said in all seriousness. "I'm really sorry to hear how you feel about not knowing how to ride a bike. Nobody should feel like that."

Suddenly Lena felt this conversation had gotten way too real. The genuineness of it all made Lena all too uncomfortable and in looking for a way out, Lena once again resorted to comedy.

"Boohoo, poor little rich girl knows how to ride horses but not a bike… somebody call an ambulance!" Lena quipped as best she could.

"Don't do that." Kara told her with firmness and it almost felt like a reprimand.

"Don't do what?" Lena asked in confusion; Kara's thumb now caressing her jawline.

Kara swallowed before answering her. "Don't dismiss yourself like that."

Lena did not know what to say to that so she remained silent.

"I really wanted to meet you." Kara whispered after what felt like a million years. "When you first rejected the invitation… I was so disappointed. Even if we're in this situation now, I still don't regret having met you."

Lena gulped at that; her throat felt hoarse and she still did not quite know what to say.

"I don't mean to make you uncomfortable, but I think you must know by now that I have a little crush on you."

Lena gasped a little at that and then Kara's thumb traveled all the way to her lips.

"Is there any chance that you might feel the same way about me?" Kara asked her with a shaky voice.

Lena was perplexed, paralyzed, stumped.

She felt herself nod her answer to Kara's question and then felt completely flabbergasted as Kara's face leaned down to her own for a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ain't Kara a sweetheart? :3


	8. Mushrooms

Kara's lips were cold and rough against Lena's. Nevertheless, this was probably one of the best kisses Lena had ever received because it seemed as if Kara understood just how chapped her lips were but not being able to help kissing Lena, decided to apply the lightest of pressures to try to still give Lena a soft kiss.

It was perfect. Lena started to feel emotional and tears rushed to the corners of her eyes.

Lena wanted to send a very clear message to the other woman, and that was that she did not care in the least that Kara's lips were chapped.

Lena deepened the kiss, bringing one of her hands to cup Kara's nape.

Kara reacted immediately, her tongue coming into play.

Unlike her lips, Kara's tongue was warm, so very warm. Lena felt a surge of heat in her chest that made her dizzy.

Once the kiss finished, it took a while for Lena to open her eyes. She just wanted to live in that moment for a little longer.

"Lena." Kara called out to her.

Lena opened her eyes. It was so dark that she could barely see Kara's face. "I was going to wait till after the shooting to ask you out." Lena confessed.

Kara leaned in again ad gave Lena another kiss. "So was I." She told her and they both laughed a little at that.

"Are you too cold?" Kara asked after leaning down and embracing the other woman.

Lena placed her arms around Kara and held tight. " _Super_ cold."

Kara giggled in Lena's neck, holding on to her tightly too. "When we survive this thing, I'll take you out on a proper date.”

“Can it be indoors?”

* * *

That night Lena slept in Kara’s arms and although she was still cold, it still was one of the best sleeps of her life. Even through circumstances that could only be characterized as dire, Lena still felt safe in Kara’s embrace.

That very morning Kara made them a tea of Spruce leaves.

“It’ll keep you from catching a cold.” Kara told her. As they shared Kara’s water canteen she had heated over a small fire right at the edge of the little cave.

After that ‘breakfast’ they packed up the little they had and went back out into the heavy rain.

Each time Lena took a step, all she could feel was pain. Everything hurt, even blinking hurt. Nevertheless, she trailed just behind Kara as they made their way back to the river.

When the heavy foliage of the forest became more scarce, Kara stopped spearheading their hike and instead slowed her pace to match Lena’s while holding her hand.

This made Lena instantly swoon as they now walked side by side through the Norwegian woods.

“So…”Lena decided to break the comfortable silence between them and due to the heavy rain all around them, she needed to resort to shouting in order to achieve her goal.

“Yes?” Kara shouted back.

“How much further till we reach the river?” Lena yelled her question.

Kara looked her in the eye for a short moment and then turn to look straight ahead and pointed with her finger. “We’re here.”

Instead of the riverbank they had ended up in after the flashflood, Lena now saw mud in its place.

“This can’t be it.” Lena said as she shook her head in disbelief.

Through squinted eyes due to the heavy downpour Lena saw a flash of fear in Kara’s blue orbs.

“It changed paths.” Kara explained.

Lena’s heart sunk to her stomach. She studied Kara’s face for a second, to check if she again saw fear in her eyes, but instead found nothing but determination.

“They are not going to come looking for us in this area now that the river changed course. We’re going to have to rescue ourselves.” Kara told her.

Lena bit her lip in a gesture of pure anxiety, but then acknowledged Kara’s words with a nod.

“C’mon.” Kara pulled her by the hand and together they made their way up the little incline, back to where they had come from. “We just need to find the river again. We find the river, we find the search party.”

They walked together along the muddy path, trying to be careful with each of their steps.

They walked for at least two whole hours without coming close to a _hint_ of a river. They went over plenty of pools of water though, each one providing hope to Lena that perhaps they would encounter a bigger body of water in the vicinity.

Then Kara faltered for a moment, nearly tripping and falling, but managing to remain upright. She looked at Lena with embarrassment and Lena simply gave her a small smile in return.

Then they resumed their walk.

Kara took two more steps and then fell to the ground. Lena tried to pull her up by the hand as a reflex, but failed to actually prevent her fall.

“Kara, are you okay?” Lena shouted to the other woman in order to be heard over the sound of the thundering rain.

“It’s just that my leg is giving me a hard time. I just need a short break and I’ll be good to go.” Kara explained as Lena helped her get back on her feet.

“Let’s try to find you somewhere to rest.” Lena told her, and as she tried to walked with her towards the forest, Kara again stumbled and fell over.

Lena felt so imponent at neither having the speed nor the strength to help Kara stay on her feet.

“Sorry.” Kara shouted. “I just need to find my balance.”

“It’s okay, take your time.” Lena did not know what to think. Without Kara at a hundred percent, their chances of survival would decrease dramatically.

Lena placed Kara’s arm across her own shoulders and slowly helped her up. Together they walked over to the closest of trees.

Lena helped Kara lie down against the trunk. The trees above provided some protection, but again, it was dangerous for them to stay still and wet for an extended period of time.

“We need to find a dryer place.” Lena knelt down in front of Kara and started wiping water from the other woman’s face.

“Just give me five minutes and then I can keep going.” Kara was breathing hard through her mouth and Lena saw her flinch in pain as she sank further against the tree.”

In a surge of an emotional eruption of protective feelings, Lena decided to take matters into her own hands. “You’re in no condition to keep going. Stay here. I’ll find us something.” She told Kara and then took off with Kara yelling after her.

With pure adrenaline coursing through her veins a tired and hungry Lena jogged her way deeper in the forest, trying to find anything resembling a shelter of some kind.

Eventually the face of a cliff came into view. The rock did not go all the way down, but instead there was a concave at the bottom that could serve as a roof.

Inspecting the cliff once she got closer, Lena realized that the bottom of it was filled with grass (or moss?) but upon further inspection realized that it only serve to slightly conceal a layer of thick brown mud.

Lena took in a deep worried breath.

This would have to do.

She made her way back jogging as well until she found Kara supporting herself against a tree on her way to Lena.

“I told you to stay put!” Lena spat out. What if she had gotten hurt? What then?

Kara was just as pissed. “You can’t just run away like that! Are you insane?!”

“I found a place for you to rest. It’s not much further.” Lena ignored Kara’s question and again went to place Kara’s arm on top of her shoulders to help her walk towards the cliff.

“I’m serious Lena, what if something bad had happened to you? You can’t do anything like that ever again!” Kara was still mad at her as the both of the move through the denser forest.

“And you can’t walk by yourself in this state. What if something bad had happened to you?” Lena bit back.

Kara huffed in annoyance. “I’m a professional Lena. I know what my body can and cannot do and with all due respect, I know how to take care of myself.”

Lena’s throat clogged up at that. “I never said you don’t know how to take care of yourself. I just- you need to be more careful.” Lena said in a softer tone.

Kara stayed quiet after that and Lena followed her lead.

Once under the cliff, Lena told Kara to lean against the rock and not to sit down yet because of all the mud. Kara commented something along the lines of her entire lower body already being covered with mud due to her falling to the ground earlier, but Lena paid no mind as she started plucking branch after branch from nearby trees in order to create a floor where Kara could sit.

By the time Lena finished her task and sat next to Kara with her back against the cold stone, she could feel all her muscles burning in pain.

“I’m so hungry.” Lena complained with a huff as she watched Kara starting to take off her clothes.

“C'mon strip.” Kara told her, completely ignoring Lena’s previous comment.

Lena however, did as told and again sat on Kara’s lap after she was done removing all of her wet clothing.

She was so pissed at Kara right now and could not believe she had to embrace her like this under these conditions.

Minutes passed and as Lena felt warmer, she noticed more and more just how hungry she was.

“I’m sorry.” Kara whispered to her ear.

Lena groaned, wordlessly telling Kara that she needed to do better in order to receive Lena’s forgiveness.

Kara kissed Lena’s cheek softly. “I’m sorry I scared you, but- but you scared me too.”

Lena lowered her forehead to Kara’s shoulder and pressed herself tighter against her body.

“I’m sorry I ran away like that.” Lena told the other woman in a small voice.

Kara leaned away in order to catch Lena’s gaze. “Don’t ever do that again.” She said in a firm tone.

Lena leaned in and gave Kara a kiss. “I won’t.” She promised.

“My knee is really killing me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to continue for the rest of the day.”

Lena stood up and went over to their clothes to wrung out the water from them. No longer did she have any sense of shame at being naked in front of Kara; not because they now seemed to have entangled themselves in a romantic relationship, but because _who had the time for embarrassment in a situation like this?_ “We need to get going. Any chance you’d be able to finds yet another cave where to burrow ourselves for the rest of the day?”

Kara laughed at that as she too leaned over to grab an article of clothing and squeeze the water out of it. “Let’s hope I do. This cliffside you found gives me a good indication that there could possibly be a cave nearby.”

After putting their wet clothes back on, Lena helped Kara move along the cliffside. “Will you remember our way back to the muddy no-longer river where we were making our way back to the actual river?” Lena asked after taking a look back through the dense forest.

“Don’t worry. This thing is like a GPS in and of itself.” Kara told her while pointing at her own forehead.

Lena chuckled at that and then heard her own stomach growled.

The only thing in her stomach for about six hours now had been Spruce tea. Lena would kill for some hare right about now.

“Do you think- Do you think that after we find shelter, I could- or _we_ could try to haunt down another hare?” Lena asked Kara as they clumsily moved through the forest.

Kara stayed quiet.

“Kara?” Lena insisted.

Blue met green for a split second and then Kara’s eyes darted away. “Actually about that…”

“What is it?”

“That hare was put there by the production team. We were meant to find it.” Kara confessed in a timid voice.

Lena raised her eyebrows in realization. So many questions raced through her head until she finally settled on: “Why?”

Kara sighed before answering. “There are no hares around here and the production team didn’t want us fishing because that’s what we did on the last episode with Maya Rudolf.”

Lena suddenly felt like an idiot. “I did wonder how it was possible for you to see it through all those bushes…”

“Yeah…” Kara said sheepishly. “I already knew it was there.”

“I thought you were all about ‘keeping it real’…?” Lena did not want to accuse Kara of anything but then noticed that she had in fact come off as accusatory.

“I try. I really try but at its core this show is about interviewing celebrities, is not meant to make anybody go through any actual hardship… just- take a walk through nature with ‘Supergirl’ and open up a little bit about yourself.” Kara tried to justify.

Lena sighed. “Is there other type of game around these parts. I’m starving.” Lena decided to let go of the topic lest she actually piss Kara off.

“There are birds, but with this rain- there’s no way they’ll come out- plus I don’t have a bow or a rifle.” Kara explained.

They were basically doomed then.

“We could try to find mushrooms.” Kara offered. “But we need to be super extra careful. There are mushrooms here with poisonous twins.”

“Poisonous twins?”

“Yeah, that’s when you have two mushrooms that look alike except that one of them is edible and the other one is poisonous.” Supergirl elaborated. “We need to get lucky and find mushrooms that I can identify as twin-less.”

Lena gaped for a moment. Was Kara suggesting that they risk their lives on her mushroom knowledge?

“Are you good at identifying mushrooms?” Lena asked tentatively.

“I’m amazing at it!” Kara beamed. “I also happen to know a lot about psychedelic mushrooms if you care for a little party of our own.”

Lena laughed. “Maybe later, for now I just want to eat something, _anything_.”

“There it is!” Kara pointed and Lena looked at a hole in the cliffside; a cave. “See? Our luck is changing!”

And Kara was right.

This cave was by far the nicest one they had been in so far. The floor was dry, the smell was very subtle and there was a little roof at the exit under which they could probably light a fire.

Lena asked Kara to rest as she tried to gather any and every piece of wood, branch, bark and mushroom she could find.

Kara built the fire in an intrinsic sort of way, weaving pieces of wood and branches together as if she was making a basket. “This will help us light it even though it’s wet.” She clarified for Lena.

Afterwards she examined all the mushrooms Lena had brought and discarded most of them as either the ones that had twins, poisonous and psychedelic. Only leaving the ugliest, darkest one as Lena’s food for the day.

While Kara cooked it, Lena went outside again to try to find more of it and came back with four more.

It truly was a feast. They ate charred mushrooms in a skewer and drank rain water that Kara had boiled inside her metal canteen.

Again they took off their clothes and held each other as they had done twice before. Their clothes hanging from a makeshift clothesline by the fire.

“We’re getting really good at this.” Lena told Kara and then pressed her lips against hers.

“Mmm… you’re really good at that.” Kara complimented as Lena continued to kiss her cheek, her jawline and her neck.

“I’m guessing that like a million people have already told you how sexy you are… but it’s worth repeating. You’re so fucking sexy Kara.”

Kara deepened the kiss after that. They were inside the cave, on top of the only piece of dry clothing they had: the extra pair of pants that had remained inside their backpack.

“How do my hands feel?” Kara asked as she placed them on Lena’s thighs. “Not too cold?”

“Not too cold at all.” Lena reassured her.

Kara gave Lena another deep kiss before retreating. “Okay, good. How do you feel about this?” She as she moved her arm in order to cup Lena’s center with her hand.

Lena jolted with a squeal and then the both of them laughed. “Too cold? Kara checked.

“Yes.” Lena answered her through a breathy laugh. Not too cold for my leg but definitively too cold for that.”

Kara kissed Lena’s jaw and near her ear. “That’s too bad.”

Filled with disappointment, Lena was struck by the muse and came up with a solution. “Give me your hand.” She requested of Kara.

Kara complied willingly and with a curious smile and then watched as Lena introduced two of her fingers into her mouth.

“Gosh that’s- that feels so nice and warm.” Kara whimpered out.

Lena smiled as she continued to suck on Kara’s fingers, her eyes wanton and desperate.

Coming out with a pop, Lena took Kara’s fingers out of her mouth and lowered them to touch her once again.

This time they felt warm around Lena’s lower lips and both women let out little moans due to their respective feelings of arousal.

“Don’t tease me; please put them inside.” Lena practically begged in a needy voice.

Kara leaned in to greedily suck on Lena’s neck as she entered her with two fingers.

Lena stood up on her knees as she straddled Kara in order to give her ministrations more room.

Kara eagerly took advantage of the space Lena had provided in order to pump into her at an increasingly faster pace.

Lena placed her arms around Kara’s neck. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She continuously moaned out and Kara basked in Lena’s sound, going deeper and faster with each thrust.

Soon enough Lena did not even remembered what it felt like to be cold; her entire body was on fire. She leaned her neck back in pleasure and then felt Kara sucking on one of her nipples and biting down.

“Yes!” Lena voiced out in a ragged tone. “Please don’t stop; please don’t stop; I’m so close Kara; I’m so fucking close.”

“Yeah?” Kara asked her in a sultry deep voice. “Are you gonna come for me? Is that what you’re gonna do?”

Lena clenched her eyes as she grunted out a _yes_ to Kara’s question.

“You’re so beautiful Lena; so beautiful coming on my fingers.” Kara told her before biting on her neck and Lena saw stars.

Her body tightened with her climax, her hips still moving along with Kara’s rhythm as she pursued any and all aftershocks.

Then Lena’s body sagged on top of Kara’s; breathing hard through her nostrils she tried to get a hold of her bearings.

“Fuck you’re so hot Lena. That was amazing.”

“Was that-“ Lena panted for a moment. “Was that the first time you’ve had sex inside a cave?”

Kara laughed at that. “Yes, of course it was.”

“Mine too.” Lena breathe out. “Nobody can say I’m not an outdoorsy person anymore.” She concluded with utter exhaustion in her voice and Kara laughed and laughed, kissing her shoulder from time to time and providing much needed support for Lena’s limp body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading guys!  
> We're nearing the end, how exciting :D


	9. Parachuting

The next morning surrounded by Kara’s arm and feeling warm. It had been a long time since she had ever felt like that.

She let out a deep breath upon hearing the rain outside. If she could only get herself to fall back asleep, then she would not have to come to terms with her current reality. The reality where she was constantly cold and wet.

The reality where the only thing she had eater yesterday was a tea and some mushrooms.

And the reality where her best chance at survival was currently limping her way through the Norwegian forest.

She just needed to go back to sleep, back to a world filled with warmth and not any semblance of a problem.

“Lena.” She hears Kara whisper near her ear and it immediately brings back memories of what they did last night.

Lena had never had sex on the first date. Now that she had thought about it, she and Kara had never even gone out on a date in the first place.

If she really thought about it, it did not matter. For all they knew they might die today. Lena’s priorities had certainly shifted in the past 3 days.

“Lena?”

“I’m a-“ Upon realizing her voice came out super groggy, Lena cleared her throat. “I’m awake.” She finished in a more normal tone.

Kara laughed breathily, making Lena’s little hairs on the back of her head stand up to attention.

“How’s your knee?” Lena turned to look at Kara after asking her question.

Kara gave her a big smile. “Is fine. It doesn’t hurt anymore. All I needed was some good rest.”

“I’m happy to hear that.” Lena leaned down and softly pressed her lips against Kara’s.

“Last night…-” Kara started to say, but Lena interjected quickly.

“Last night was perfect.”

Kara smiled and gave Lena a soft kiss. “Let me go make us some tea.” When she went to stand up, she hissed in pain.

“Kara!” Lena placed her hand on Kara’s shoulder, her voice letting out just how scared she felt after watching Kara in pain.

Kara let out a slow breath through her mouth as if she was trying to hold back tears. “So… yeah, about my knee-”

“Don’t force yourself. Just- just rest here, I’ll go make us some tea.”

Lena went to get up, but Kara held on to her arm. “Please be careful out there.” She told her.

Lena nodded and kissed Kara goodbye before leaving the cave.

Outside she could see where Kara had made the fire just yesterday and beyond that, all she could see was the forest and a torrential downpour coming from the sky.

Lena was so tired of being cold and wet, so she just stood there for a few moments. She had taken Kara’s radio out with her and was now playing with it, in case she tune into anything. The radio turned on and gave her a bunch of static for a few seconds. For a split second, Lena thought she had heard the word “Out”, but she could not be sure. She tried playing with it a little more to no avail.

With a heavy sigh filled with nothing but disappointment, Lena trod on into the rain to try to find some leaves for a breakfast tea and gather wood for a fire.

From the ashes of Kara’s fire, Lena tried to figure out the weaving pattern that would help her light it even though everything was wet. After having succeeded, she heated some water in Kara’s canteen and threw in some spruce leaves.

All in all it had taken her at least an hour and a half to make them some ‘breakfast’.

Kara’s blue eyes welcomed her once she walked back into the cave.

“Thank you.” Kara said when Lena gave her the canteen. She took two sips and then gave it back to Lena.

Lena took drank some while trying to stay away from Kara to not get her wet before it was strictly necessary.

“How are you holding up?” Lena asked Kara after a silence had settled in between the two.

Kara sighed. “I don’t know if you know this, but I used to be a Navy Seal…”

Lena nodded. “Your sister told me about it.”

Kara nodded. “Well… I had to leave because of an injury- _this_ injury.” She placed a hand on her bad knee.

“So it’s an old wound…” Lena concluded.

Kara looked at her with pained eyes. “Yes… I- uh- after my injury I was out for half a year on recovery. Afterwards my sister talked me into doing Supergirl and… well… my knee acts back up here and there throughout the years, but I hit it pretty hard against a rock when we got caught by the flashflood I- umm… I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”

Lena moved closer to Kara, placing a cold hand on the other woman’s arms. “There’s nothing to apologize for. You did nothing wrong, this is not your fault.” She tried to reassure her.

Kara looked down in shame. “I just feel like- like such a burden right now and- let’s just say it’s not a feeling I’m used to.”

“I know what you mean… I’ve always been used to taking care of myself- not really relying on anybody.” Lena tried to sympathized.

“How come?” Kara asked her with frowned eyebrows.

Lena gave Kara the canteen before answering her. “You know about my family, right? My brother’s in jail, my mother’s trial is taking place right now…”

Kara looked to the side sheepishly. “Yes, I know about that. My producers- I read all about that before us meeting. They- they told me to stay away from that topic altogether during the interviews.”

Lena laughed at that. “That was one of the two requests I made to my lawyer before signing the contract. ‘Don’t let them make me eat something gross and forbid them from making me talk about my family.’”

“Yeah well… everybody who’s been on the show has their own unique requests. There’s nothing out of the ordinary with that.” Kara commented with a shrug.

“Thank you for saying that.” Lena responded in all honesty. It was reassuring that Kara was trying to not make her feel like such a freak for having her lawyer hash this out with the show producers.

“Anyways… even way before they both ended- where they are right now… I’ve always felt like I was on my own.” Lena tried to get back on topic. “They’ve always made me feel like an outsider and I- I guess I never even tried to fight my way in or anything, I just accepted it for what it was and started to go my own way. I was the only one that was ever going to care about me so… might as well start acting like it.”

Kara took one of Lena’s hands in hers. “How old were you?”

“When I realized that my family was never gonna care? Maybe thirteen- fourteen.”

“That’s rough.” Kara observed.

“Let me tell you something… it was definitively lonely, I mean- I was fine in general, I had food, clothes, a good education… emotionally speaking though I was adrift.”

Kara looked at her for a long moment after that and for a second there Lena felt seen, truly seen.

“We’re getting out of this. One way or another we’re going to make it.” Lena interrupted the silence.

Kara took in a deep breath. “I can’t put any weight on my leg Lena.”

“You saw this cliffside… I just- I’ll go up there with the radio and-“

“How are you going to get up there?” Kara interjected in alarm. 

“We have the rope… I’ve already climbed a hundred foot wall.” Lena tried to justify.

“That was for the show, I had already installed the safety rope the day prior… It was all a controlled environment.” Kara argued back.

Lena took off her jacket, underneath she was still dry.

“What are you doing?” Kara asked her.

Lena moved closer to Kara and surrounded her in her arms. “Whether you like it or not, I’m our best chance right now.”

“I know. I know that. What you don’t understand is that you can’t climb that cliff without an anchor or belays.” Kara said near Lena’s ear. Her voice strained with worry.

“Then I’ll just walk back to where we were yesterday and make my way up from there.”

* * *

Lena packed all the gear Kara had in her backpack that could help her rappel down the cliff once she made her way up, cutting her return time to the cave altogether. She packed Kara’s canteen only because Kara insisted and took the extra pair of pants with her just in case.

“Don’t do anything too crazy, okay? If something looks dangerous it’s because it is, just make your way back here and we’ll figure something else out.” Kara told her before kissing her goodbye.

Making her way back to the mud trail they were chasing in order to get to the river, took Lena about forty minutes. From there she could the path she had just come from which went along the cliff wall. Then she observed the cliff wall going in a perpendicular direction that was actually parallel to the mud trail and less steep.

She decided to keep following the mud trail, following this new smaller cliff wall until she would hopefully find that the cliff was safe enough to climb up or maybe even walk. Either that or she would eventually find the river they had been looking for the day prior.

As she walked through the mud, Lena tried to focus on her breath. Something inside her told her that she was just a bad thought away from chickening out of this and making her way back to the cave, back to Kara.

Therefore, if she could just focus on something neutral, like breathing, next thing she knew another forty minutes would go by.

Lena tripped at least three times in the mud before she found the cliff side had become nothing but a few steps up.

She went straight to that part of the small cliff and made her way up. For a moment, the mud on her hands made her grip on a rock slip and she nearly fell, but turns out her left hand held on tighter as a reflex and Lena managed to get her bearings and keep on climbing.

As she reached the top of the small cliff, she felt her heart thundering in her chest a mile a minute. The she positioned herself looking towards she had initially come from, back to where Kara was. She calculated that it would take her another hour to reach the highest part of this hill: the cliffside where their cave was.

In any case, she took out the radio and turned it on again, just to see if she could hear anything.

She pressed it hard against her ear, her back to a tree to try to cover herself from the rain, and heard nothing.

Lena turned the radio back off and continued her way up the hill.

She felt so hungry by now that she was almost dizzy. Her hands had become prune-like and all she was cold and wet.

She would never get used to that feeling.

The way up was currently doing a number on her thighs, they burned so bad that it was nothing short of astounding that Lena still felt cold.

Once she reached the cliffside, she took a moment to try again with the radio.

It did not work.

“Hello? Mayday, mayday, mayday! I am Lena Luthor and I am currently stranded on a cliffside, from the cave where we were last seen we made our way to the river and then a flashflood took us somewhere else. The river bifurcated but the next day it was gone. We’re currently trying to make our way to the river using a mud trail as guide but one of us is hurt. We need medical assistance and food and thermal blankets.”

Lena felt like an idiot yelling out this message to no one in particular.

“Please help us.” She said in a lower tone.

After that, Lena took a moment to sit by a tree and cry.

How had it ended up like this?

By the time she stood up she felt even dizzier. She needed to get some food in her stomach. She continued her path along the cliffside, hoping to recognize the landscape just outside their cave and rappel her way down back to Kara.

Lena had never rappelled down anything, and Kara did not let her leave until she understood how to safely tie the roped around a tree, how to hook herself up to the rope and how to break on her way down.

All in all, Lena was incredibly nervous about doing this.

She kept walking near the edge, trying to put her fears behind her by focusing on identifying anything familiar.

If she looked head downwards, part of the cliff wall interrupted her view and she hope that after leaving that part of the cliff behind her, she would be able to see their cave.

She hurried along and went past that, instantly she could see way ahead until she saw the entrance to the cave, but most importantly, she saw Kara sitting there beside a fire.

Lena ran.

“Kara!” She yelled, but the sound from the rain was so loud, she doubted Kara would see her. “Kara!”

She ran some more until she was close enough for Kara to hear her, she limped her way out of the cave roof into the open field and waved at Lena with both of her hands.

Lena waved back with the same enthusiasm.

What a view for sore eyes.

Lena tied the rope to a tree the way Kara had taught her and then pulled on it to check its strength, afterwards she adjusted all the rope to her body securing the carabiners.

She did not have a helmet on and that really worried her. For some strange reason she had this idea that Kara’s backpack was some sort of magical object that materialized everything they needed, it had the canteen, the rope, the radio, the extra pair of pants and a bunch of little climbing devices like carabiners and ACTs, but it did not have a helmet in it, nor did it have food or a medical kit. Still, Kara’s backpack was better than anything, most of all when all of Lena possessions could be counted with one hand: her clothes, a wristwatch, the GoPro and her shoes.

Lena cleared her mind for a moment and tried to focus back on the task at hand. Then she stood with her back to the cliff and not really wanting to dwell on it, she took her first step out.

“That’s it. Go slow.” Kara shouted.

Lena let go of the break a little bit and slid down some more. Little by little she made her way down a 150 foot rock wall.

Kara received her in her arms. “You did so good!”

“That was- that was actually fun.” Lena told Kara between laughs.

“I’m so glad you liked it.” Kara said to her as they walked back to the cave. “Did the radio pick up on anything while you were up there?”

“No… not really. I tried to send out a message though, just in case.” Lena said with a defeated tone.

“That’s good. Are you hungry? I’ve got more mushrooms.” Kara told her as she helped her off of her jacket.

“I’m starving.” Lena confessed.

Kara gave her a stick filled with charred mushrooms and Lena devoured it.

“So how was it?”

“It was really good. I never even paid any attention to mushrooms before, but these are delicious.”

Kara laughed. “I meant your trip… how was your trip?” She clarified.

Lena laughed at her own mistake before answering her. “Everything went fine."

“How far up the mud trail did you go?”

“I think about an hour or so… not that far.”

“No river?” Kara asked her just to check.

“No, no river.”

They stayed quiet after that.

“I’m glad you liked the mushrooms.” Kara told her after taking a sip of water from her canteen (that Lena had now brought back).

“Thank you so much Kara.” Lena said softly.

* * *

“I’m sure tomorrow I’ll feel way better and we’ll walk all the way back to the hotel if need be.” Kara whispered into the night.

They were both lying on the cave’s floor. Lena with her head on top of Kara’s chest.

Lena was no medical doctor, but she had studied some basics due to her endeavoring in bio-mechanics. Earlier and under the pretense of giving Kara a knee massage, Lena had tried to ascertain what was wrong with her leg. She determined it was only a sprain, but after hearing Kara tell the story of how she was first injured during a parachute landing that went wrong and learning she had overcome and ACL tear thanks to three major surgical interventions, Lena feared Kara was one trip away from being seriously and permanently injured.

This was serious, this was about Kara’s ability to walk again.

“We’ll see how you feel tomorrow and decide…” Was Lena’s noncommittal answer to Kara’s comment.

A few moments on silence went by in which Lena had no idea what Kara was thinking about.

“Where will we go on our first date?” Lena asked Kara instead.

Kara hmmm in thought. “We’ll- I have a little log cabin in Colorado. We could spend a weekend there… swim in the lake… I’ll cook for you and we’ll make love all night long.”

Lena smiled. “No internet?”

“There’s not even a TV.” Kara laughed and Lena joined her.

“That sounds really nice. Do you know how much the media will heckle us after we survive this? Getting lost in the woods again will sound like a dream after talking to the press for just an hour.” Lena quipped.

Kara hugged Lena tighter as she laughed.

“On our second date I’ll take us to a hotel… we’ll get the biggest suite and eat the entire room service menu. We’ll have sex on every surface in the room, including the bathtub and you’ll never want to leave.” Lena suggested animatedly.

Kara laughed. “So we’re already on our second date?”

“Of course we are! Nothing screams _long strong relationship_ like surviving something like this together!”

“Good, I’ll feed you chocolate strawberries, we’ll drink champagne… it’ll be a great second date. For our third one I’ll take you to my place. I’ll show you all my baby pictures and share every embarrassing little story about my teen years. Our bond will be stronger than ever.” Kara let out a dreamy sigh.

“On our fourth date we’ll go to my place instead. I don’t have that many pictures though… but I do have plenty of awkward teenage stories that go well into my twenties.” Lena could not help letting out little silly giggles, she felt like a schoolgirl all over again.

“That sounds amazing.” Kara kissed the back of Lena’s head with affection. “I can’t wait… By the way, you’re younger than me, right?” Kara asked awkwardly.

“How old are you?” Lena asked back with mirth.

“I’m thirty-two.” Kara answered her.

“Yes, I’m younger than you.” Lena said ambiguously.

Kara laughed. “Okay okay, but how much younger?”

“I’m twenty-eight.” Lena lifted her face off of Kara’s chest. “Ain’t you the cradle-robber Ms. Danvers! When You were eighteen I was only fourteen! How scandalous!”

Kara laughed and laughed. “You’re silly!”

Lena leaned over and pressed her lips against Kara’s. Both of their lips were so chapped by now, the kiss was far from pleasant by any normal measure, except that it provided a comfort Lena very much needed right now.

“Kara…?” Lena whispered after the kiss was over.

“Yeah?”

“Can I… Can I touch you?”

“You’re touching me right now.” Kara said with locked laughter behind her words.

Lena pushed her playfully. “You know what I mean! Don’t play dumb!”

Kara cackled at that with pure joy.

“Want me to use my mouth instead?” Lena offered and Kara instantly stopped laughing.

“Are you insane? You’re not going down on me without me taking a shower first!” She continued laughing and Lena could not help but smile at that.

Then Lena straddled Kara’s good knee and grinded down. “How about this?”

Kara placed a hand under her chin, pretending to think it over. “Mmm… this is fine.”

Lena pushed own thigh against Kara’s. “What do you think about it?”

Kara lowered her hands to Lena’s ass and guided her grinding. “I’m thin- thinking that I like it.” She said between gasps.

“Is that so?” Lena breathed near Kara’s mouth.

“Just shut up and kiss me.” Kara told her right before pulling her into a kiss as Lena continued to grind against her.

Lena used her tongue more than she would for a normal kiss, trying to avoid causing any discomfort to Kara with her chapped lips. Somehow that made the kiss turn from sexy to plain dirty, with just their tongues stroking each other.

Then Kara full on sucked on Lena’s tongue and that made her lose it. Lena started to grind deeper and faster against Kara, desperately seeking that relief.

She heard Kara moaning her name over and over and that just gave her such a power trip that she decided to pull her shirt up and offer one of her breasts to Kara. “Suck me.” She instructed with a hoarse voice.

Kara simply obeyed. Leaning up to seal her lips on Lena’s nipple and suck wantonly as Lena continued to grind against her.

Then she felt Kara buckle as she came against Lena’s leg, still sucking on Lena’s breast and that in itself triggered Lena’s own climax.

Kara’s lips finally let go and Lena moved to kiss Kara on the lips.

“That felt so good, but I’m exhausted now.” Kara spoke softly.

Lena nuzzled her face against Kara’s neck. “That’s good, just go to sleep.”

Kara did not even bother to answer, but limited herself to groaning her agreement.

“Good night Kara.” Lena whispered against her temple with a sweet kiss.

“You did so- so good today… So brave.” Kara told her with a barely there voice and a few seconds later, she was already unconscious.

Lena moved to lay on her back with her arms nesting the back of her head and then she thought about her day.

Kara was in no condition to walk, that much was certain.

Lena could feel herself get weaker and weaker by the day. The only positive thing about the rain was that they had never gone thirsty, but eating a few mushrooms once a day was taking a toll on her body. She could feel it.

There was no signal up there and what were the actual chances of her messaged being received by anybody?

If she only had nanobots with her… she could program them to help the radio sig- what was she thinking? She did not even have a computer to program anything with, least of all any electricity.

She could program the nanos with the radio itself though… radio signals were useful for that too.

Like lightning, the idea struck her with both strength and speed. She took off her watch, went to get Kara’s little flashlight and then tried to read any engravings that would let her know whether it used her nanotech or not.

It did not. And even if it did how was Lena supposed to unscrew the tiny screws on the watch?!

She felt herself go insane. If only she had her phone with her, she could program her nanos to do anything she wanted. She could get them to send a Morse code message even!

She scolded herself. She needed to stop fantasizing and think in more realistic terms. Besides, if she had her phone with her she would simoly call for help.

It was almost as if there was a puzzle in front of her and she just needed to figure out where everything fit.

She had this tiny lantern, the radio, the wristwatch- wait, Kara had her own wristwatch! Lena went over to Kara and took off her watch in order to inspect it.

It was analog… what even? This woman was too old school… it was- it was adorable actually.

Her mind kept reeling well into the early hours of the morning until she remembered about the only object she had managed to keep after the flashflood: The GoPro camera.

Lena rushed to Kara’s backpack and took the camera out and there on the bottom it had carved: LCORP, INC. NANOTECH 022-A0-287EF.

Lena wanted to cry. She yelled and cheered raucously not caring about waking Kara up.

“What’s going on?” Kara asked her with sleep in her eyes.

“Give me your knife!” Lena requested excitedly. “Give me your knife!”

Kara put her hand inside her pocket and took out her trusty knife.

Lena unscrewed the lid of the GoPro.

“What are you doing?”

“I think I might’ve found us a way to talk to Alex!” Lena informed her excitedly.

Kara quirked her head in confusion. “How?”

Lena pushed the little call-back red button inside the camera and quickly took her finger off of it. Suddenly the red button turned black after every single nanobot inside the camera positioned itself on top of the red surface.

Now, in the surface of what used to be a red button, hundreds of thousands of nanobots stood, inert.

Lena suddenly felt Kara’s cheek press against her own and now both of them were staring intently inside the camera. “Your nanotech?” She asked.

“Yes… these little buddies are going to help us get back home!” Lena said triumphantly.

“They’re inert right now, and under an encryption to prevent people from re-programming them as they please, but lucky for us I designed that encryption myself and I can get them to turn the radio into a phone… a satellite phone.”

Kara leaned her cheek away from Lena’s in order to look her in the eye. “You’re amazing!”

Lena felt her face warm up with a blush. “Thanks.”

It took Lena all morning, but eventually she managed to use the radio signals to de-encrypt the nanobots and then reprogram them to work in conjunction with the radio itself as a phone.

“What’s your sister’s number?” Lena asked Kara with a huge smile on her face.

As Kara gave out the numbers, Lena used the radio’s knob to mark them.

When Lena heard the first beep of the dial tone she felt her heart stop.

* * *

“Lena please! There’s still so much work to do. Can’t you postpone even for just one day?” Sam begged her. It was already 10 at night and a group of LCorp’s employees was still trying to work out the kinks of a merger deal they were hopefully going to finalize in the near future.

“I really can’t. You know once I make plans with Kara they’re set in stone Sam.” Lena tried to justify.

“This is your third trip in two months? You can’t keep putting off work like this!” Sam whined.

“I’m not putting anything off… I’m just going away for five days with my girlfriend.” Lena laughed it off as she continued to pick up her things in order to leave.

“I miss your workaholic ways…” Sam lamented with a big sigh, but then quickly cheered up. “Take lots of pictures, okay? I think I’ll be going home in the next hour.”

“I’ll send you all the pictures you want and yes, please go home and be with your daughter. Soon she’ll be off to college and you’ll end up all alone.” Lena mocked.

“That’s not funny. I’m really dreading having to drive her all the way to New York.”

Lena crinkled her nose. “What are you talking about? You guys will have lots of fun on that cross country, it’s going to be amazing. Now… if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get going, my flight is in less than four hours.”

They kissed goodbye and Lena went on her way.

Once she got back to her apartment she packed her bags and her driver took her to the airport.

“Where to now Ms. Luthor?” Frank, her driver asked her with a big smile.

“This time we’re going to Bali, Kara wants to teach me how to surf! Can you imagine?” Lena said in good fun.

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to Ms. Luthor!”

“You’re too kind.”

* * *

“Lena!” Kara shouted at the airport’s exit. It had taken Lena all of 17 hours to get to her destination.

Lena ran, dragging her suitcase with her and not caring about anything else in the world except reaching Kara’s arms.

Kara was holding a sign that said 'Ms. Luthor', but she instantly let it go the moment Lena threw herself in her arms.

“I missed you.” Lena said between pants.

Kara kissed her cheek. “I missed you too.”

They let go of each other, only to embrace once again in a kiss.

“Are you ready for this?” Kara asked her after the kiss was over.

“Not really… But I’ll still do it.” Lena said with a precarious smile.

“Atta girl!” Kara fist-bumped Lena in the dorkiest of ways.

Next thing she knew, Lena was on an airplane 14,000 feet in the air.

“I’ll go first.” Kara yelled at her in order to be heard. She was dressed in full parachuting gear and even cool sunglasses to complete the look. She then kissed Lena and told her. “I love you.” before letting herself fall backwards from the plane.

Lena gulped.

Why was she doing this again?

Lena looked at the plane’s pilot for a moment and waved goodbye before jumping out of the plane at least a minute after Kara.

She had done this three times already, but it never ceased to surprise her how intense the fear in her stomach became right before jumping and how quickly it was replaced by a feeling of complete and overpowering freedom the moment she felt herself falling.

She looked down and could see Kara diving head first. They were to land on a small island off of the coast of Bali and spend the next four days in complete and utter bliss.

After a few moments, Lena watched Kara activate the parachute.

It opened up fairly quickly, was entirely white and had the words: “WILL U MARRY ME?” written on it.

Lena could not believe it. She felt tears stream out and up her eyes out into the sky and for a moment nearly got too distracted, but managed to activate her parachute just in time.

Kara ran towards her the moment she landed.

Lena detached the parachute as best she could and ran towards her as well.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Was her answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Much appreciated <3


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